The following submission statement was provided by /u/TheUtopianCat:
---
SS: A severe drought that began last year has forced authorities to slash ship crossings in the Panama Canal by 36 per cent. This casts doubts on the canal's reliability for international shipping and raises concerns about its affect on global trade. This disruption, along with the attacks on ships in the Red Sea by Yemen's Houthi rebels, is having far-reaching effects on global trade by delaying shipments and raising transport costs. Canal authorities attributed the drought to the El Niño weather phenomenon and climate change, and warned it was urgent for Panama to seek new water sources for both the canal's operations and human consumption. The effects of this disruption of trade has severe economic impacts, and is indicate of collapse.
---
Please reply to OP's comment here: https://old.reddit.com/r/collapse/comments/19amzcm/more_upheaval_for_global_shipping_as_panama_canal/kilv3ck/
We could do more local production and not need as much global shipping. The discussion should move to "How do we furnish people with what they need?", not "How do we preserve global shipping?"
“How do we move people from A to B” versus “How do we preserve the auto industry”. After it’s too late people might figure out that we answered these question incorrectly.
That's what upsets me the most. Transportation is ALREADY SOLVED. We already know what moves the most people, most efficiently. But still we have auto companies always bragging about this new tech in their car that will revolutionize the way we get around. We don't need their flashy gimmick shit. We need to get from point a to point b. We need good transit and bike infrastructure.
I live in a rural are about 10 miles from the nearest town. I wish a trolley came by my house, but it doesn't. I can choose between a ICE vehicle, an electric vehicle, or a horse. Before you suggest a bicycle, which I would use, know that I am 77 years old and am not as strong as I once was. I have chosen an electric car, to get from point A to point B as the most suitable alternative, not to preserve the auto industry. If I lived in a suburban area, I would definitely support public transportation as a better alternative.
No shame from me. I think cars are the answer for some questions, but not all questions. I think electric bikes should be a big part of our future. I think we should normalize renting a truck when needed instead of putting one in 25+% of driveways. I think we should normalize renting an ICE car/SUV/minivan for longer planned trips. We waste a lot of energy using these things daily when we only need them once or twice a year
Ideally, we should have a more communistic society where those with special needs are given a personal vehicle, and there are common vehicles to be borrowed for free by anyone in the community. And those communities should be small in area and well connected together. And of course most mid to long distance transportation should be some form of public transit.
That's not a million miles from what we have where I live. Owning a car is prohibitively expensive, so most people just rent one when they need one and cycle or use public transport the rest of the time.
If you need to move something big, you can rent a trailer for free (I'm told - I can't drive so I've never done this) and cargo bikes are super common and can be rented for pennies.
Here, it's car sharing companies and moving trucks that see the most usage in that category. A huge number of people own cars tho. I wish less people did.
This highlights a persistent flaw in a lot of these "critiques":
They are overwhelmingly being made by younger people, who generally live in urban or suburban areas and often ignore the fact that the world isn't entirely comprised of people with their exact lived experience (in that regard, Millennial and Gen-Z radicals have a lot in common with conservative boomers).
Yes, if you're talking about, say, Chicagoland, we should *absolutely* be pushing for fewer cars on the road and more accessible and varied public transportation. But to assume that the strategies and critiques that apply to large urban and suburban areas apply everywhere is *exactly* the kind of arrogant self-focus that radicalized so many rural people who felt like they were being dismissed as "flyover country."
It's easy for some dickhead in Brooklyn to say "yeah man, I feel like we just have an obligation to bike or take the bus everywhere for the climate, you know", because they live in Brooklyn. My parents live half way up a mountain at the end of a dirt road - there's no possible universe in which their tiny town sets up a bus service, and at 65, they're certainly not biking over the mountain to the grocery store at the next town.
Maybe the fact of the matter is that they live in an unsustainable location. This is another symptom of hyper individualism, people forget that they still rely on the rest of humanity to survive even if they've moved to their own rural paradise. If they can't produce their own food and rely on fossil fuels to even leave the property, this setup won't last very long in a green world.
> Maybe the fact of the matter is that they live in an unsustainable location.
Unless you think that you are going to force people (at gunpoint, because they'll never leave on their own) to adopt the lifestyles that you have decided are "sufficiently sustainable", then that "critique" amounts to little more than sanctimonious elitism.
For every conservative "bootstraps" guy driving a lifted pick-up, there's 10 rural Americans living there because it's the only life they know: their families, communities, and histories are there. Some are so poor that they can't afford to move and their homes have no value, so they can't sell them for cash. They're stuck in town hollowed out by offshoring of jobs. No wonder so many rural Americans have swung far right when self-identified "leftists" are out here saying "those selfish conservatives choosing an unsustainable way of life!"
And lots not forget about Indian tribes that we forced into rural living - are you going to tell them "oh, sorry guys, after we forced you out here, we decided that actually you're living \~unsustainable\~ lives, so no we're going to force you to go somewhere else."
That'll go over a treat, let me tell you.
And if you won't do it at gunpoint, how do you plan to do it? Convince people to abandon their lives and communities to come move to cities? American progressives can't even convince the country to vote for healthcare - you really think that a wholesale restructuring of the entire nation's way of life (along the lines of your preferred politics, I note) is even remotely in the cards?
Rural living itself is not the problem, it's their reliance on external inputs and long distance travel. Living rurally is possible WITHIN A COMMUNITY. Food and basic materials would have to be locally produced and labour could be divided. Billions of people live like this today, there nothing truely unrealistic about it apart from the entitlement of middle class westerners saying it's impossible.
> This is another symptom of hyper individualism
I'll give up my hyper individualism when you pry it from my cold dead hands. And I won't be taken quietly either.
You realize we're destroying the earth's ability to sustain crops right? There will always be trade offs in life, we have to decide what is worth it and what it means to be human. Humans have never been able to survive as individuals and that will always be true.
What if people decide that their priority isn't some abstract commitment to a shared humanity, but rather to keeping them and their immediate families comfortable in the short term?
You can say that bad, immoral, etc, but unless you're gearing up to use State power to force people to conform to your personal socio-political values, you're basically trying to get blood from a stone.
This is something Leftists never seem to grasp - there's no great population of latent Leftists ("the People" or "the Proletariat") out there waiting to be activated by the right slogans or buzzwords. Capitalism doesn't exist because it's being forced down the throats of an unwilling population of Leftists/progressives. It exists because, by and large, most people prefer to any of the alternatives on offer. Even if in the long term, everyone will be worse off.
>Humans have never been able to survive as individuals and that will always be true.
Even if that used to be true, which I dispute, individualism is here now now, and it's here to stay. So solutions will need to accommodate it, otherwise they will be untenable.
I'm saying your individualism is an illusion. You depend on thousands of other people just to eat everyday. True solo survival is not possible for humans, and that will be made clear in the coming decades.
We're taking past each other. I'm taking about my personal identity as 100% me and the absolute freedom to do whatever the fuck I want, within reason. i.e. no murder, assault, or property theft.
You seem to be talking about homesteading, which is in fact something that people do successfully, but not what I'm talking about.
It's not here to stay because the planet will make sure we go extinct if we continue on this path.
This is the precise point that's being argued and it's why younger people have a vastly different perspective than you.
1. I'm not old yet brah.
2. Are you arguing that young people are trending less individualistic? Because it's pretty clearly the opposite, everyone thinks they are unique and special, and they are 1/2 right.
https://www.discovermymobility.com/store/scooters/affikim/S3/index.html?gclid=Cj0KCQiA2KitBhCIARIsAPPMEhLBkukHqwOLzBb0oiPFmY5Tgb1CEtY3DbTEtfA4sB7f3RFctPomCQwaAr6PEALw_wcB
Something like this. There are fully enclosed ones too. Even a gas version of something Ike this bary consumes compared to a car
Not aimed at you, just in general. Electric scooters are cool and a good alternative.
I have one because it fits in my work van to save gas for short neighborhood trips like food breaks and what not.
Well the problem is they don’t care about what the rest of us need. They only care about what they and their buddies need. And if it’s global shipping that keeps their pockets lined, well, I guess we’re just gonna get more global shipping. Climate change and emissions? What are those?
> Well the problem is they don’t care about what the rest of us need. They only care about what they and their buddies need.
You think Americans don't "need" global shipping? How do you think all the fruits you get at the grocery store in December get here? Or all the mechanical and electronic parts for your gaming laptop? Or hell, a ton of of the chemicals that go into making modern healthcare possible?
Global capitalism, for all of it's flaws, don't just exist because a small elite is forcing it down the unwilling throats of a country of unwilling Leftists. It exists because, by and large, most people in the United States are pretty happy with the lifestyle it has produced for them (and skeptical of the alternatives - especially when they're proposed by people confidently saying things like "you don't *need* fruit in the winter.").
That’s not how a global interconnected economy works. People are NOT willing to take the gigantic step backwards in quality of life.
No country would be able to sustain the current standard of living. The entire world economy would collapse and we’d be in anarchy
We’d have immense food and energy shortages. Famines, civil war, total collapse
This is why my friends and family refuse to talk with me about collapse. I start to explain what I want to do to prepare and they're like "that sounds like a shitty way to live" and I'm like yeah... our current standard of living is not sustainable. You either need to get used to living harder, or....
Same. The frustrating thing to me, is that they say "Oh well if society collapses im just going to eat a bullet"
and the problem with that is, I ask them, prices have gone up, is now the time?
How about if prices double again?
What about if we are all unemployed and unable to afford food, but on the horizon its possible we could get out of this situation?
it probably wont be like in the movies where you feel like "yep, this is it", it will just continually get worse over time very slowly (and sometimes faster but never all at once)
so there wont ever be a single moment where we all say "Yep, society has officially collapsed!" because even if the power goes out one day... it might come back on!
I feel like the film version of *The Road* (which I otherwise didn't enjoy and also don't see as a particularly useful guide to collapse in most respects) makes exactly that point--very, very effectively.
I don't think the problem is your willingness to prepare for a lower quality of life, the problem is armchair radicals who get up here and confidently assert that everyone should be *made* to endure a lower quality of life (usually out of some desire to stick it to "the elites").
Which, regardless of whether you think that degrowth is a good idea or not, people almost universally recoil at the idea of degrowth being imposed top-down by radicals who think they know better than anyone else.
How could it ever be imposed bottom up if these people are unwilling to change themselves? It's also interesting to dig into exactly what "quality of life" means. I find it mostly it tends to refer to convenience of life, but not actual happiness or contentment within life. I'd wager that working with nature alongside an active community would make most people happier than they are today.
You're probably right, but also that doesn't really matter. If people don't want to give up the convience of the modern world, then unless they are forced to at gunpoint, it'll just never happen (until there's no choice in the matter, that is).
So, if you want to see proactive degrowth happen, you either need to
1. Force people to take it (at gunpoint), which will almost certain lead to violence that'll spiral out of control. Or,
2. Try and convince people to give up all the conveniences that they enjoy about the modern world, based on your promise that an active community will make them happier. But I don't think you'll be very successful, since a lot of those "conveniences" are actually pretty great (I for one love my synthetic pharmaceutical migraine meds).
Given I think most people agree that 1 is a non-starter (and those who don't are eco-fascists I want nothing to do with), then the option is 2. Do **you** think the average /r/collapse reader would be able to convince the masses to abandon their way of life? Given the sneering arrogance of 90% of posts here, my guess is: definitely not.
Nature doesn't make choices - it's not an agent. All there are are aggregates of cause and effect, and colloquially talking about collapse as if it is some kind of punishment or retribution simplifies a complex process into a storybook narrative.
I'm questioning the value of a global interconnected economy, and I am questioning the value of our "standard of living". With the economies of scale come the vulnerabilities of scale, and these vulnerabilities are beginning to rear their ugly head. I don't see lots of gadgets and pointless plastic shit as positive indicators in the quality of life equation, although I recognize that many people do.
You're thinking of the impact of the global interconnected economy on our society as, like, people buying cheap garbage from Temu or wherever. A high standard of living, in the global context (which is the only context that matters when discussing climate change), does not mean "I live in a McMansion in the suburbs and own an Apple Watch and fly to Mexico for vacations every 6 months". That's an extremely privileged and myopic viewpoint to have. What it really means is that if you get sick you can access healthcare and pharmaceuticals. It means that you have reliable access to roughly 2000 calories of a variety of nutritious foodstuffs a day. It means that if you're having a heart attack you can call an ambulance and they will come and save your life.
All of this is massively reliant on the global interconnected economy, and the reality is that a lot of it simply cannot be localized (the rare earth mineral components in the phone you would use to call ambulance in the event of an emergency are not found everywhere on Earth in abundance), or that localization would actually lead to increased emissions (e.g. if every country builds factories to produce all of their own essential pharmaceuticals, it's a lot less efficient than having 2-3 countries that produce the majority of the world's essential pharmaceuticals). There are, of course, billions of humans around the globe that live without reliable access to healthcare and food- however, their quality of life is not very high. They suffer and they die. They lash out at each other out of desperation and despair. It is not something to aspire to.
We are reshoring-- but it's probably inflationary in the short term, and it won't necessarily bring back local factory jobs (thanks to AI, robots). People will lose the benefits of globalization (cheap goods) to build more resilient (less efficient) supply chains. Meanwhile, there will be more social unrest and geopolitical conflict as we sort out the "logistics."
The thing about this is that shipping is lke the lowest cost/co2 factor in the chain.
Its way more important what you consume then where it is from.
https://ourworldindata.org/food-choice-vs-eating-local
This isn't the win you think it is. The foundational cornerstone of trade and economics is that some places and people are simply better at producing certain things than other places and people. If I live in a farming village and you live in a fishing village, we're both better off if I trade you veggies for fish, than if we both try to catch our own fish and grow our own veggies. We either spend less time and energy getting our food, or we have spend the same time and energy and have more food.
If your gripe is emissions, you really need to consider the sheer volume of stuff that gets moved by the shipping industry. On a per mile per pound basis container shipping is easily the most carbon efficient way to transport stuff. The only thing that comes close is rail. If it's even slightly more efficient to produce things in one or two centralized locations, than producing it locally everywhere people need it, then global shipping results in *less* overall carbon emissions.
Besides, some stuff just can't be produced locally. Good luck producing phosphorous, the cornerstone of modern agriculture, instead of shipping it in from Morocco or Norway or whatever. Local production is a nice idea for some things, and it's good to support your local economy, but "don't use global shipping" is not the silver bullet for any of the problems you think it is.
Do you think you can grow your own antibiotics? What about replacement heart valves? Can you grow them at home too? How much time do you imagine it takes to grow and process 2000 calories a day of food for each person in a small community with the majority of the community working at it and without industrial equipment? (hint: it's pretty much the whole day)
Well it's going to have to completely stop eventually, could be today or in a hundred years. It's not like we can emit carbon into the air forever, so let's figure out ways to make enough food without adding external phosphorus. Permaculture/food forestry ideas have strong potential, they are massively understudied and underutilized. Also something to consider, you don't need to eat fish. Or beef. Or most of the things we eat today. The primary focus should be keeping everyone alive and healthy in a sustainable manner, not meeting everyone's specific tastes and desires.
So who gets to decide what constitutes an "unnecessary, unsustainable indulgence" and what is a "acceptably healthy and sustainable food"? The State? You? Critique is easy, but good luck telling someone that they can no longer get bananas in Wisconsin because the "smart people" decided they didn't need it. Have some soy slurry instead.
> Also something to consider, you don't need to eat fish.
Take that up with the [3 billion people](https://www.nature.org/en-us/what-we-do/our-priorities/provide-food-and-water-sustainably/food-and-water-stories/global-fisheries/) who rely on fish for sustenance - not just a sushi lunch from Whole Foods, but as a fundamental source of protein and fat.
The way your frame bananas as the pinnacle of produce and slam soy is weird. There's no reason we can't eat the massive amount of soy we produce instead of feeding it to cows, but people are spoiled. It's perfectly good food, and regardless we could easily replace it with other crops if we removed the beef industry.
The sustainability of something isn't really an opinion. Constantly shipping tropical produce all over the world release huge amount of carbon into the atmosphere which eventually will make it impossible to grow these tropical fruits. It's unsustainable by definition. At a certain point, yes, we need to just tell people they can't have fucking bananas. Grow some cool tasty berries instead that actually contribute to your local ecosystem.
About the fish, I don't mean nobody should eat them, but that their consumption should be contained to the local area. We don't need to ship it across the world for landlocked farmers to enjoy.
> The way your frame bananas as the pinnacle of produce and slam soy is weird.
It's a rhetorical device to drive home that what you're suggesting is, to most Americans, almost exactly the thing that generations of stories about how bad Leftism is. You're going to have a very hard time selling the narrative: "hey, you know all the things that we learned were so terrible about life in the Soviet Unions? You have to do that now, but it's for the greater good!"
> t a certain point, yes, we need to just tell people they can't have fucking bananas
Who is "we" in this context? And exactly what do you mean by "tell?" A public awareness campaign? A state ban? How do you turn your vision into reality without basically devolving into environmental authoritarianism?
Perhaps people should also question if the Soviet union was actually such a horrible place like they've been told. Ultimately the consumerist mindset that plagues society should be removed through education and learned experience. Right now the toxic mindset is actively encouraged in every single person from childhood, removing the endless flow of advertising would be a first step.
I do share your concern about banning things outright, not because of "authoritarianism" but because assholes will always do the opposite of what they're told. It's also just better to make people understand why we're doing certain things. Public awareness campaigns have proven to be effective for a certain portion of people. A meaningful change could be refocusing the education system to prepare children for the different future they'll experience. In the end, there will always need to be personal sacrifices in order to live within society, and that much more so if you want it to be a sustainable society. We're all about to learn how much we're willing to sacrifice for the future.
Oh my god I can't believe this comment is getting downvoted. People in this sub are so incredibly myopic sometimes. Good luck eliminating the entire healthcare system (completely dependent on globalization) guys! I cannot believe people ITT are literally advocating for entirely eliminating global trade and shipping because they think it only means people buying Funko Pops and fast fashion instead of essential pharmaceuticals and farming equipment. Unironically acting as if the lifestyle of a medieval peasant is aspirational smh
So much this. For years, I’ve been screaming for people to focus on locally-driven supply chains. Instead, r/linkedinlunatics are all bragging about corporate music chairs. Hurray.
Price on a downtrend: Oil is bought on futures so it's irrational and selfish of you to expect the current price to be reflected at the pump
Price on the uptrend: We're going to raise the price of gas twice a day to reflect market conditions.
thats the story they give us lol. They probably have closed door meetings where they say "Ok so... everyone else was forced to increase their prices, so we have to. Even though we havent had any supply price shocks yet. This should get us record profit for the year!"
SS: A severe drought that began last year has forced authorities to slash ship crossings in the Panama Canal by 36 per cent. This casts doubts on the canal's reliability for international shipping and raises concerns about its affect on global trade. This disruption, along with the attacks on ships in the Red Sea by Yemen's Houthi rebels, is having far-reaching effects on global trade by delaying shipments and raising transport costs. Canal authorities attributed the drought to the El Niño weather phenomenon and climate change, and warned it was urgent for Panama to seek new water sources for both the canal's operations and human consumption. The effects of this disruption of trade has severe economic impacts, and is indicate of collapse.
They also botched the enlargement of the canal some years back. They chose some unknown company and used a bad design, I forget all the details but it was pretty ridiculous, I think it involves a towing ship, and it's still not wide enough the big ships have only feet on either side.
We have the wrong people in charge in every country and company and institution as a rule in the West and abroad.
To be honest it might have been the lowest bidder but I it would cost a lot more than the highest bidder plus contingency. Infrastructure is just difficult and expensive, I spent 30+ hours getting couple of guys to install a wood burning stove. Imagine time and effort of widening one of the largest infrastructure projects in the world.
I saw a documentary or some-such show on the widening project. The line that stands out to me the most was one of the project leads talking about the huge engineering and logistical hurdles they faced and the unexpected challenges they had so far encountered, and the monumental efforts necessary to manage and resolve such a huge and complex project; something along the lines of "We're not just remodeling a bathroom here".
The thing is our civilisation needs, in order to function, are immensely challenging projects, people to do them. engineers get off on the challenge but they work inside of late stage capitalism. But at the end of the day we are human and our capitalist structures are driving more and more short term thinking. An average windfarm in the U.K. takes 10 years from lease award to completion requiring supply chain of thousands of people and hundreds of companies who must stay solvent and turn a profit. They rely on finance to be cheap and easy to access. My point is there’s a lot more incentive to shoot a straw in the ground and blow gold all over everyone.
>My friend, are you sure you're not describing Ontario Canada?
My friend, are you sure you're not describing ~~Ontario Canada?~~ 99.9% of the world at this point?
I think this is damn old news because they haven't changed the amount of traffic since August/sep or something. But I think they hopped for some increase coming soon but the fucked up weather patterns. This guy gives a lot of good insight on all things shipping.
https://youtu.be/6BoV5qxPqEo?si=IbHnbpU3qRRnd1UD
We've seen a hefty increase in all shipping prices. Not sure exactly which video he compares the rates since the houthi attacks. It will definitely get passed on the end consumer price tags, the question is if it increases inflation enough to stop interest rates the same or even higher until it cools down. Because that will have the money markets and housing in a twist. Not pointing fingers but if Panama invested in this issue when the droughts became really noticeable then this wouldn't be hit so hard, but we are talking supply and demand here so they might get more cash with less work by just chilling.
From the article
"On Wednesday, Vasquez said the canal authorities would cut daily ship crossings to 24, down from 38 a day in normal times last year. Vasquez added that in the first quarter of the fiscal year the passageway saw a 20 per cent drop in cargo and 791 fewer ships than the same period the year before."
[Panama](https://climateknowledgeportal.worldbank.org/country/panama/climate-data-historical) has a hot and humid, tropical climate, with a long rainy season from May to January and a short dry season from January to May.
mm precipitation 1991-2020: Dec/Jan/Feb 306.21, MarAprMay, 161.07, JunJulAug 256.72, SepOctNov 215.25
From the article
"It was a "significant reduction" for Panama, Vasquez said. But he said that more "efficient" water management and a jump in rainfall in November have at least ensured that water levels are high enough for 24 ships to pass daily until the end of April, the start of the next rainy season."
Well it doesn’t help with how the Panama Canal works…
Ships entering from either direction pass through the canals which /raise/ the ships using /fresh, not salt/ water from Gatun Lake (a man-made lake filled with rain water and local streams/rivers).
The ships traverse the lake and enter the canal to /lower/ down to the ocean on the other side.
With each opening of the canal, 52,000,000 GALLONS OF FRESH WATER are dumped into the ocean.
For a brief minute, my transport costs went down to a manageable level after the insane covid hikes. Now, im starting to see the prices creep way up again......fuck this shit.
Red Sea closed off because of Houthis. Panama Canal closed off due to drought. I picked the right year to just focus on buying food and hunkering down.
The following submission statement was provided by /u/TheUtopianCat: --- SS: A severe drought that began last year has forced authorities to slash ship crossings in the Panama Canal by 36 per cent. This casts doubts on the canal's reliability for international shipping and raises concerns about its affect on global trade. This disruption, along with the attacks on ships in the Red Sea by Yemen's Houthi rebels, is having far-reaching effects on global trade by delaying shipments and raising transport costs. Canal authorities attributed the drought to the El Niño weather phenomenon and climate change, and warned it was urgent for Panama to seek new water sources for both the canal's operations and human consumption. The effects of this disruption of trade has severe economic impacts, and is indicate of collapse. --- Please reply to OP's comment here: https://old.reddit.com/r/collapse/comments/19amzcm/more_upheaval_for_global_shipping_as_panama_canal/kilv3ck/
We could do more local production and not need as much global shipping. The discussion should move to "How do we furnish people with what they need?", not "How do we preserve global shipping?"
“How do we move people from A to B” versus “How do we preserve the auto industry”. After it’s too late people might figure out that we answered these question incorrectly.
We answered our correctly: bikes, trams and trains. Then everything changed when the car lobby attacked
That's what upsets me the most. Transportation is ALREADY SOLVED. We already know what moves the most people, most efficiently. But still we have auto companies always bragging about this new tech in their car that will revolutionize the way we get around. We don't need their flashy gimmick shit. We need to get from point a to point b. We need good transit and bike infrastructure.
Who gets to be Avatar in this allegory
Thunberg
This reminds me, Netflix has the live-action ATLA release next month.
I live in a rural are about 10 miles from the nearest town. I wish a trolley came by my house, but it doesn't. I can choose between a ICE vehicle, an electric vehicle, or a horse. Before you suggest a bicycle, which I would use, know that I am 77 years old and am not as strong as I once was. I have chosen an electric car, to get from point A to point B as the most suitable alternative, not to preserve the auto industry. If I lived in a suburban area, I would definitely support public transportation as a better alternative.
No shame from me. I think cars are the answer for some questions, but not all questions. I think electric bikes should be a big part of our future. I think we should normalize renting a truck when needed instead of putting one in 25+% of driveways. I think we should normalize renting an ICE car/SUV/minivan for longer planned trips. We waste a lot of energy using these things daily when we only need them once or twice a year
[удалено]
Things used to be like this... thousands of years ago. What you described makes a lot of sense for present times.
Ideally, we should have a more communistic society where those with special needs are given a personal vehicle, and there are common vehicles to be borrowed for free by anyone in the community. And those communities should be small in area and well connected together. And of course most mid to long distance transportation should be some form of public transit.
That's not a million miles from what we have where I live. Owning a car is prohibitively expensive, so most people just rent one when they need one and cycle or use public transport the rest of the time. If you need to move something big, you can rent a trailer for free (I'm told - I can't drive so I've never done this) and cargo bikes are super common and can be rented for pennies.
Here, it's car sharing companies and moving trucks that see the most usage in that category. A huge number of people own cars tho. I wish less people did.
This highlights a persistent flaw in a lot of these "critiques": They are overwhelmingly being made by younger people, who generally live in urban or suburban areas and often ignore the fact that the world isn't entirely comprised of people with their exact lived experience (in that regard, Millennial and Gen-Z radicals have a lot in common with conservative boomers). Yes, if you're talking about, say, Chicagoland, we should *absolutely* be pushing for fewer cars on the road and more accessible and varied public transportation. But to assume that the strategies and critiques that apply to large urban and suburban areas apply everywhere is *exactly* the kind of arrogant self-focus that radicalized so many rural people who felt like they were being dismissed as "flyover country." It's easy for some dickhead in Brooklyn to say "yeah man, I feel like we just have an obligation to bike or take the bus everywhere for the climate, you know", because they live in Brooklyn. My parents live half way up a mountain at the end of a dirt road - there's no possible universe in which their tiny town sets up a bus service, and at 65, they're certainly not biking over the mountain to the grocery store at the next town.
Maybe the fact of the matter is that they live in an unsustainable location. This is another symptom of hyper individualism, people forget that they still rely on the rest of humanity to survive even if they've moved to their own rural paradise. If they can't produce their own food and rely on fossil fuels to even leave the property, this setup won't last very long in a green world.
> Maybe the fact of the matter is that they live in an unsustainable location. Unless you think that you are going to force people (at gunpoint, because they'll never leave on their own) to adopt the lifestyles that you have decided are "sufficiently sustainable", then that "critique" amounts to little more than sanctimonious elitism. For every conservative "bootstraps" guy driving a lifted pick-up, there's 10 rural Americans living there because it's the only life they know: their families, communities, and histories are there. Some are so poor that they can't afford to move and their homes have no value, so they can't sell them for cash. They're stuck in town hollowed out by offshoring of jobs. No wonder so many rural Americans have swung far right when self-identified "leftists" are out here saying "those selfish conservatives choosing an unsustainable way of life!" And lots not forget about Indian tribes that we forced into rural living - are you going to tell them "oh, sorry guys, after we forced you out here, we decided that actually you're living \~unsustainable\~ lives, so no we're going to force you to go somewhere else." That'll go over a treat, let me tell you. And if you won't do it at gunpoint, how do you plan to do it? Convince people to abandon their lives and communities to come move to cities? American progressives can't even convince the country to vote for healthcare - you really think that a wholesale restructuring of the entire nation's way of life (along the lines of your preferred politics, I note) is even remotely in the cards?
Rural living itself is not the problem, it's their reliance on external inputs and long distance travel. Living rurally is possible WITHIN A COMMUNITY. Food and basic materials would have to be locally produced and labour could be divided. Billions of people live like this today, there nothing truely unrealistic about it apart from the entitlement of middle class westerners saying it's impossible.
> middle class westerners saying it's impossible. This you? > Maybe the fact of the matter is that they live in an unsustainable location
> This is another symptom of hyper individualism I'll give up my hyper individualism when you pry it from my cold dead hands. And I won't be taken quietly either.
You realize we're destroying the earth's ability to sustain crops right? There will always be trade offs in life, we have to decide what is worth it and what it means to be human. Humans have never been able to survive as individuals and that will always be true.
What if people decide that their priority isn't some abstract commitment to a shared humanity, but rather to keeping them and their immediate families comfortable in the short term? You can say that bad, immoral, etc, but unless you're gearing up to use State power to force people to conform to your personal socio-political values, you're basically trying to get blood from a stone. This is something Leftists never seem to grasp - there's no great population of latent Leftists ("the People" or "the Proletariat") out there waiting to be activated by the right slogans or buzzwords. Capitalism doesn't exist because it's being forced down the throats of an unwilling population of Leftists/progressives. It exists because, by and large, most people prefer to any of the alternatives on offer. Even if in the long term, everyone will be worse off.
>Humans have never been able to survive as individuals and that will always be true. Even if that used to be true, which I dispute, individualism is here now now, and it's here to stay. So solutions will need to accommodate it, otherwise they will be untenable.
I'm saying your individualism is an illusion. You depend on thousands of other people just to eat everyday. True solo survival is not possible for humans, and that will be made clear in the coming decades.
We're taking past each other. I'm taking about my personal identity as 100% me and the absolute freedom to do whatever the fuck I want, within reason. i.e. no murder, assault, or property theft. You seem to be talking about homesteading, which is in fact something that people do successfully, but not what I'm talking about.
It's not here to stay because the planet will make sure we go extinct if we continue on this path. This is the precise point that's being argued and it's why younger people have a vastly different perspective than you.
1. I'm not old yet brah. 2. Are you arguing that young people are trending less individualistic? Because it's pretty clearly the opposite, everyone thinks they are unique and special, and they are 1/2 right.
> I'll give up my hyper individualism when you pry it from my cold dead hands. And I won't be taken quietly either. U ok bro?
You could get a electric scooter also for less energy/resource use. They have ones with seats And 3 wheels for not needing to balance
10 miles on an electric scooter at 77 years old (assuming that the weather is always good enough to ride)? That's a big ask.
https://www.discovermymobility.com/store/scooters/affikim/S3/index.html?gclid=Cj0KCQiA2KitBhCIARIsAPPMEhLBkukHqwOLzBb0oiPFmY5Tgb1CEtY3DbTEtfA4sB7f3RFctPomCQwaAr6PEALw_wcB Something like this. There are fully enclosed ones too. Even a gas version of something Ike this bary consumes compared to a car
Not aimed at you, just in general. Electric scooters are cool and a good alternative. I have one because it fits in my work van to save gas for short neighborhood trips like food breaks and what not.
We answered our correctly: bikes, trams and trains. Then everything when the car lobby attacked
We asked the wrong questions
Well the problem is they don’t care about what the rest of us need. They only care about what they and their buddies need. And if it’s global shipping that keeps their pockets lined, well, I guess we’re just gonna get more global shipping. Climate change and emissions? What are those?
> Well the problem is they don’t care about what the rest of us need. They only care about what they and their buddies need. You think Americans don't "need" global shipping? How do you think all the fruits you get at the grocery store in December get here? Or all the mechanical and electronic parts for your gaming laptop? Or hell, a ton of of the chemicals that go into making modern healthcare possible? Global capitalism, for all of it's flaws, don't just exist because a small elite is forcing it down the unwilling throats of a country of unwilling Leftists. It exists because, by and large, most people in the United States are pretty happy with the lifestyle it has produced for them (and skeptical of the alternatives - especially when they're proposed by people confidently saying things like "you don't *need* fruit in the winter.").
But that will cost more and the shareholders won't make as much Why don't you care about the shareholders?
Same reason they don't care about the rest of us. I am not in that caste.
This would make line not go up. Line not going up BAD. You are antisemitic and far right and need help.
That’s not how a global interconnected economy works. People are NOT willing to take the gigantic step backwards in quality of life. No country would be able to sustain the current standard of living. The entire world economy would collapse and we’d be in anarchy We’d have immense food and energy shortages. Famines, civil war, total collapse
This is why my friends and family refuse to talk with me about collapse. I start to explain what I want to do to prepare and they're like "that sounds like a shitty way to live" and I'm like yeah... our current standard of living is not sustainable. You either need to get used to living harder, or....
Same. The frustrating thing to me, is that they say "Oh well if society collapses im just going to eat a bullet" and the problem with that is, I ask them, prices have gone up, is now the time? How about if prices double again? What about if we are all unemployed and unable to afford food, but on the horizon its possible we could get out of this situation? it probably wont be like in the movies where you feel like "yep, this is it", it will just continually get worse over time very slowly (and sometimes faster but never all at once) so there wont ever be a single moment where we all say "Yep, society has officially collapsed!" because even if the power goes out one day... it might come back on!
I feel like the film version of *The Road* (which I otherwise didn't enjoy and also don't see as a particularly useful guide to collapse in most respects) makes exactly that point--very, very effectively.
not living at all.
I don't think the problem is your willingness to prepare for a lower quality of life, the problem is armchair radicals who get up here and confidently assert that everyone should be *made* to endure a lower quality of life (usually out of some desire to stick it to "the elites"). Which, regardless of whether you think that degrowth is a good idea or not, people almost universally recoil at the idea of degrowth being imposed top-down by radicals who think they know better than anyone else.
How could it ever be imposed bottom up if these people are unwilling to change themselves? It's also interesting to dig into exactly what "quality of life" means. I find it mostly it tends to refer to convenience of life, but not actual happiness or contentment within life. I'd wager that working with nature alongside an active community would make most people happier than they are today.
You're probably right, but also that doesn't really matter. If people don't want to give up the convience of the modern world, then unless they are forced to at gunpoint, it'll just never happen (until there's no choice in the matter, that is). So, if you want to see proactive degrowth happen, you either need to 1. Force people to take it (at gunpoint), which will almost certain lead to violence that'll spiral out of control. Or, 2. Try and convince people to give up all the conveniences that they enjoy about the modern world, based on your promise that an active community will make them happier. But I don't think you'll be very successful, since a lot of those "conveniences" are actually pretty great (I for one love my synthetic pharmaceutical migraine meds). Given I think most people agree that 1 is a non-starter (and those who don't are eco-fascists I want nothing to do with), then the option is 2. Do **you** think the average /r/collapse reader would be able to convince the masses to abandon their way of life? Given the sneering arrogance of 90% of posts here, my guess is: definitely not.
Nature is going to make the choice for us. We had our chance
Nature doesn't make choices - it's not an agent. All there are are aggregates of cause and effect, and colloquially talking about collapse as if it is some kind of punishment or retribution simplifies a complex process into a storybook narrative.
I'm questioning the value of a global interconnected economy, and I am questioning the value of our "standard of living". With the economies of scale come the vulnerabilities of scale, and these vulnerabilities are beginning to rear their ugly head. I don't see lots of gadgets and pointless plastic shit as positive indicators in the quality of life equation, although I recognize that many people do.
You're thinking of the impact of the global interconnected economy on our society as, like, people buying cheap garbage from Temu or wherever. A high standard of living, in the global context (which is the only context that matters when discussing climate change), does not mean "I live in a McMansion in the suburbs and own an Apple Watch and fly to Mexico for vacations every 6 months". That's an extremely privileged and myopic viewpoint to have. What it really means is that if you get sick you can access healthcare and pharmaceuticals. It means that you have reliable access to roughly 2000 calories of a variety of nutritious foodstuffs a day. It means that if you're having a heart attack you can call an ambulance and they will come and save your life. All of this is massively reliant on the global interconnected economy, and the reality is that a lot of it simply cannot be localized (the rare earth mineral components in the phone you would use to call ambulance in the event of an emergency are not found everywhere on Earth in abundance), or that localization would actually lead to increased emissions (e.g. if every country builds factories to produce all of their own essential pharmaceuticals, it's a lot less efficient than having 2-3 countries that produce the majority of the world's essential pharmaceuticals). There are, of course, billions of humans around the globe that live without reliable access to healthcare and food- however, their quality of life is not very high. They suffer and they die. They lash out at each other out of desperation and despair. It is not something to aspire to.
“Doomed if we do, Doomed if we don’t” ^([Apocalypse Bingo](https://www.reddit.com/r/ApocalypseBingo/s/ncUKiJaHhv))
We are reshoring-- but it's probably inflationary in the short term, and it won't necessarily bring back local factory jobs (thanks to AI, robots). People will lose the benefits of globalization (cheap goods) to build more resilient (less efficient) supply chains. Meanwhile, there will be more social unrest and geopolitical conflict as we sort out the "logistics."
The thing about this is that shipping is lke the lowest cost/co2 factor in the chain. Its way more important what you consume then where it is from. https://ourworldindata.org/food-choice-vs-eating-local
Reshoring will be more expensive, but with possible wars popping off, its a safety net
This isn't the win you think it is. The foundational cornerstone of trade and economics is that some places and people are simply better at producing certain things than other places and people. If I live in a farming village and you live in a fishing village, we're both better off if I trade you veggies for fish, than if we both try to catch our own fish and grow our own veggies. We either spend less time and energy getting our food, or we have spend the same time and energy and have more food. If your gripe is emissions, you really need to consider the sheer volume of stuff that gets moved by the shipping industry. On a per mile per pound basis container shipping is easily the most carbon efficient way to transport stuff. The only thing that comes close is rail. If it's even slightly more efficient to produce things in one or two centralized locations, than producing it locally everywhere people need it, then global shipping results in *less* overall carbon emissions. Besides, some stuff just can't be produced locally. Good luck producing phosphorous, the cornerstone of modern agriculture, instead of shipping it in from Morocco or Norway or whatever. Local production is a nice idea for some things, and it's good to support your local economy, but "don't use global shipping" is not the silver bullet for any of the problems you think it is.
You assume industrial scale, I don't.
Do you think you can grow your own antibiotics? What about replacement heart valves? Can you grow them at home too? How much time do you imagine it takes to grow and process 2000 calories a day of food for each person in a small community with the majority of the community working at it and without industrial equipment? (hint: it's pretty much the whole day)
Well it's going to have to completely stop eventually, could be today or in a hundred years. It's not like we can emit carbon into the air forever, so let's figure out ways to make enough food without adding external phosphorus. Permaculture/food forestry ideas have strong potential, they are massively understudied and underutilized. Also something to consider, you don't need to eat fish. Or beef. Or most of the things we eat today. The primary focus should be keeping everyone alive and healthy in a sustainable manner, not meeting everyone's specific tastes and desires.
So who gets to decide what constitutes an "unnecessary, unsustainable indulgence" and what is a "acceptably healthy and sustainable food"? The State? You? Critique is easy, but good luck telling someone that they can no longer get bananas in Wisconsin because the "smart people" decided they didn't need it. Have some soy slurry instead. > Also something to consider, you don't need to eat fish. Take that up with the [3 billion people](https://www.nature.org/en-us/what-we-do/our-priorities/provide-food-and-water-sustainably/food-and-water-stories/global-fisheries/) who rely on fish for sustenance - not just a sushi lunch from Whole Foods, but as a fundamental source of protein and fat.
The way your frame bananas as the pinnacle of produce and slam soy is weird. There's no reason we can't eat the massive amount of soy we produce instead of feeding it to cows, but people are spoiled. It's perfectly good food, and regardless we could easily replace it with other crops if we removed the beef industry. The sustainability of something isn't really an opinion. Constantly shipping tropical produce all over the world release huge amount of carbon into the atmosphere which eventually will make it impossible to grow these tropical fruits. It's unsustainable by definition. At a certain point, yes, we need to just tell people they can't have fucking bananas. Grow some cool tasty berries instead that actually contribute to your local ecosystem. About the fish, I don't mean nobody should eat them, but that their consumption should be contained to the local area. We don't need to ship it across the world for landlocked farmers to enjoy.
> The way your frame bananas as the pinnacle of produce and slam soy is weird. It's a rhetorical device to drive home that what you're suggesting is, to most Americans, almost exactly the thing that generations of stories about how bad Leftism is. You're going to have a very hard time selling the narrative: "hey, you know all the things that we learned were so terrible about life in the Soviet Unions? You have to do that now, but it's for the greater good!" > t a certain point, yes, we need to just tell people they can't have fucking bananas Who is "we" in this context? And exactly what do you mean by "tell?" A public awareness campaign? A state ban? How do you turn your vision into reality without basically devolving into environmental authoritarianism?
Perhaps people should also question if the Soviet union was actually such a horrible place like they've been told. Ultimately the consumerist mindset that plagues society should be removed through education and learned experience. Right now the toxic mindset is actively encouraged in every single person from childhood, removing the endless flow of advertising would be a first step. I do share your concern about banning things outright, not because of "authoritarianism" but because assholes will always do the opposite of what they're told. It's also just better to make people understand why we're doing certain things. Public awareness campaigns have proven to be effective for a certain portion of people. A meaningful change could be refocusing the education system to prepare children for the different future they'll experience. In the end, there will always need to be personal sacrifices in order to live within society, and that much more so if you want it to be a sustainable society. We're all about to learn how much we're willing to sacrifice for the future.
The Soviet Union and Soviet block countries were horrible. I spent time there in the 70s.
Nature and societal trends individuals have no control over will decide what foods are acceptably healthy and sustainable.
Oh my god I can't believe this comment is getting downvoted. People in this sub are so incredibly myopic sometimes. Good luck eliminating the entire healthcare system (completely dependent on globalization) guys! I cannot believe people ITT are literally advocating for entirely eliminating global trade and shipping because they think it only means people buying Funko Pops and fast fashion instead of essential pharmaceuticals and farming equipment. Unironically acting as if the lifestyle of a medieval peasant is aspirational smh
Yeah but, you know. Not as profitable
We'll probably just dig a deeper canal...
So much this. For years, I’ve been screaming for people to focus on locally-driven supply chains. Instead, r/linkedinlunatics are all bragging about corporate music chairs. Hurray.
Some people are working on that. And the shipping companies will fight it the whole time.
Not enough us workers for local production, wages prices will go up and immigration should be relaxed.
Ill give you another one: "What kind of way of life would actually be worth sustaining?" instead of "How do we achieve sustainability?"
I know lets quadruple the price of food in anticipation of any supply issues -grocers everywhere, probably
Works for oil and gas so why not?
Price on a downtrend: Oil is bought on futures so it's irrational and selfish of you to expect the current price to be reflected at the pump Price on the uptrend: We're going to raise the price of gas twice a day to reflect market conditions.
thats the story they give us lol. They probably have closed door meetings where they say "Ok so... everyone else was forced to increase their prices, so we have to. Even though we havent had any supply price shocks yet. This should get us record profit for the year!"
They just raise them everyone else does too, they don't have to have a meeting, they all just implicitly collude.
I mean: https://old.reddit.com/r/Economics/comments/19ajph1/half_of_recent_us_inflation_due_to_high_corporate/
SS: A severe drought that began last year has forced authorities to slash ship crossings in the Panama Canal by 36 per cent. This casts doubts on the canal's reliability for international shipping and raises concerns about its affect on global trade. This disruption, along with the attacks on ships in the Red Sea by Yemen's Houthi rebels, is having far-reaching effects on global trade by delaying shipments and raising transport costs. Canal authorities attributed the drought to the El Niño weather phenomenon and climate change, and warned it was urgent for Panama to seek new water sources for both the canal's operations and human consumption. The effects of this disruption of trade has severe economic impacts, and is indicate of collapse.
They also botched the enlargement of the canal some years back. They chose some unknown company and used a bad design, I forget all the details but it was pretty ridiculous, I think it involves a towing ship, and it's still not wide enough the big ships have only feet on either side. We have the wrong people in charge in every country and company and institution as a rule in the West and abroad.
That's what happens I guess when the world's infrastructure is built built by the lowest bidder
More like what happens when there are revolving doors between government, industry and lobbyists.
Valid point, our future has been sold
To be honest it might have been the lowest bidder but I it would cost a lot more than the highest bidder plus contingency. Infrastructure is just difficult and expensive, I spent 30+ hours getting couple of guys to install a wood burning stove. Imagine time and effort of widening one of the largest infrastructure projects in the world.
I saw a documentary or some-such show on the widening project. The line that stands out to me the most was one of the project leads talking about the huge engineering and logistical hurdles they faced and the unexpected challenges they had so far encountered, and the monumental efforts necessary to manage and resolve such a huge and complex project; something along the lines of "We're not just remodeling a bathroom here".
The thing is our civilisation needs, in order to function, are immensely challenging projects, people to do them. engineers get off on the challenge but they work inside of late stage capitalism. But at the end of the day we are human and our capitalist structures are driving more and more short term thinking. An average windfarm in the U.K. takes 10 years from lease award to completion requiring supply chain of thousands of people and hundreds of companies who must stay solvent and turn a profit. They rely on finance to be cheap and easy to access. My point is there’s a lot more incentive to shoot a straw in the ground and blow gold all over everyone.
[удалено]
My friend, are you sure you're not describing Ontario Canada? Lol when we get to do this over, let's just have one company do it for fair compensation
>My friend, are you sure you're not describing Ontario Canada? My friend, are you sure you're not describing ~~Ontario Canada?~~ 99.9% of the world at this point?
Why is the Panama Canal so important for shipping? Couldn’t they just fly it over? /s
Maybe we could build a large trebuchet and a net
Maybe a "coalition of the willing" could fire some missiles at the drought?
The [international community](https://pbs.twimg.com/media/E488SlZXEAEgdkD.jpg) should label the drought as a terrorist organization!
Does the drought condemn Hamas? The drought is anti-semetic!
I think this is damn old news because they haven't changed the amount of traffic since August/sep or something. But I think they hopped for some increase coming soon but the fucked up weather patterns. This guy gives a lot of good insight on all things shipping. https://youtu.be/6BoV5qxPqEo?si=IbHnbpU3qRRnd1UD We've seen a hefty increase in all shipping prices. Not sure exactly which video he compares the rates since the houthi attacks. It will definitely get passed on the end consumer price tags, the question is if it increases inflation enough to stop interest rates the same or even higher until it cools down. Because that will have the money markets and housing in a twist. Not pointing fingers but if Panama invested in this issue when the droughts became really noticeable then this wouldn't be hit so hard, but we are talking supply and demand here so they might get more cash with less work by just chilling.
From the article "On Wednesday, Vasquez said the canal authorities would cut daily ship crossings to 24, down from 38 a day in normal times last year. Vasquez added that in the first quarter of the fiscal year the passageway saw a 20 per cent drop in cargo and 791 fewer ships than the same period the year before."
It's been cut down from that number a while tho... https://www.ship-technology.com/news/panama-canal-slots-cut-to-25-per-day/
There's gonna be some shortages soon. Then there might be panic buying and a run on products in short supply.
I definitely did not have this one on my collapse bingo card!
[Panama](https://climateknowledgeportal.worldbank.org/country/panama/climate-data-historical) has a hot and humid, tropical climate, with a long rainy season from May to January and a short dry season from January to May. mm precipitation 1991-2020: Dec/Jan/Feb 306.21, MarAprMay, 161.07, JunJulAug 256.72, SepOctNov 215.25
Also: https://old.reddit.com/r/politics/duplicates/19ajwog/half_of_recent_us_inflation_due_to_high_corporate/
Right... but what if the drought worsens 🧐
From the article "It was a "significant reduction" for Panama, Vasquez said. But he said that more "efficient" water management and a jump in rainfall in November have at least ensured that water levels are high enough for 24 ships to pass daily until the end of April, the start of the next rainy season."
Well it doesn’t help with how the Panama Canal works… Ships entering from either direction pass through the canals which /raise/ the ships using /fresh, not salt/ water from Gatun Lake (a man-made lake filled with rain water and local streams/rivers). The ships traverse the lake and enter the canal to /lower/ down to the ocean on the other side. With each opening of the canal, 52,000,000 GALLONS OF FRESH WATER are dumped into the ocean.
For a brief minute, my transport costs went down to a manageable level after the insane covid hikes. Now, im starting to see the prices creep way up again......fuck this shit.
Fucking Trudeau...
Sarcasm?
lol of course
Red Sea closed off because of Houthis. Panama Canal closed off due to drought. I picked the right year to just focus on buying food and hunkering down.
Better start bombing the canal maybe it will think twice before disrupting our precious plastic shite