Future Scenarios by David Holmgren : A Critical Reading, part 1

[purpletigron]

The full book available as a Web site at: http://www.futurescenarios.org/

I would like to start with Holmgren's 'Energy Futures' chapter. I tend to work with 'The Precautionary Principle', which I think is in line with Holmgren's approach when he says,

"We do not have to believe that a particular scenario is likely before making serious preparations. For example most people have fire insurance on their homes, not because they expect their primary asset to be destroyed by fire but because they recognise the severity of this unlikely event." (http://www.futurescenarios.org/content/view/20/57/)

(Or, because it is a condition of their mortgage lender - because banks do lose houses to fire on a regular basis.)

Holmgren sets out to use 'Scenario Planning' methodology to look at how human society may change in the future:

"In classic corporate scenario planning the two variables might be the growth rate in the wider economy and the regulatory framework that constrains or encourages business." (http://www.futurescenarios.org/content/view/26/40/)

"Four broad energy scenarios provide a framework for considering the wide spectrum of culturally imagined, and ecologically likely, futures over the next century or more.
I've labeled these:

• "Techno-explosion,
  
• Techno-stability,
  
• Energy Descent and
  
• Collapse"
  

ETA 1: Note - Holmgren's figure encapsulates some of Holmgren's interpretations and motivations, which as I suggest below, might be better left to later discussion. If you assume that the Y-axis refers to Energy, and is intended to evoke best-estimate fossil fuel energy data such as global oil extraction as graphed here:



and that it's a non-linear sketch graph, I still think Holmgrens figure gives a somewhat useful visual guide ...



(http://www.futurescenarios.org/content/view/16/31/)

So my first question for consideration is:

Do these four energy future scenarios usefully summarise the prospects for which we need to be planning?

ETA 2 These are clearly 'simple' scenarios. I'd envisage that it could be useful to study each of these four - and decide whether one or two more simple scenarios are needed. Only then would we start to look at the complexities of how these scenarios interact, if say Countries or Regions 1 - 4 are each different mixes of Scenarios 1 - 4.

(I was hoping we'd come back to a detailed discussion of Holmgren's own interpretations and motivations quite a lot later down the line ... )

Comments

[sci_starborne]

I don't think they do summarise all options, as interaction of all or several of those outcomes across differing regional/social groups is also a likelihood.
It seems unlikely there will be a unified global response to the upcoming issues. Different political groups will take different actions. A country that's policies take it into anything other than collapse would need to be concerned if the country next to it collapsed. A lot of these theories seem to presume people will behave rationally at all times, but I would suspect the authors of those theories have never gone three days without food.
Additionally, top-down government serves well to allow us to scape-goat our own inaction or bad decisions. "It's governments fault". So if a government totally screws their country in these decisions, it's unlikely to bring any immediate change in public perception. Particularly if the ecology becomes so damaged that switching to subsistence farming or permaculture is not an option by necessity.
This is a long-winded way of saying the extra prospect is more frequent ground-level resource wars/raids between those that made sustaining choices and those that didn't.
The proactive approach would seem to be to take over control of surrounding countries that are likely to collapse to prevent them becoming aggressors in future.

Would a Cybernetic future be counted under "technolocial explosion"? By that I mean a future where we rely on sustainable resource levels, but use technology as a mediator to achieve the maximum efficiency in their production and use (presuming the development of technologies with no long-term detrimental interaction, unlike EG; pesticides).
Perhaps consider it a mix between the tech-explosion and permaculture options.

...

A highly pedantic side note would be that I'd like to see a uniform time axis on that graph. The historical side would suggest a logarithmic scale. Continuing it to the future would surely mean we'll know which outcome it will be in the next few minutes.
It also combines 3 or 4 independent data fields into the vertical axis. The vertical might as well be labelled "Terrible Things". Technically it's a terrible graph. Though probably good for putting the fear up people in huge conference rooms.

[purpletigron]

Indeed - Holmgren's figure encapsulates some of Holmgren's interpretations and motivations, which as I suggested, might be better left to later discussion.

If you assume that the Y-axis refers to Energy, and is intended to evoke best-estimate fossil fuel energy data such as global oil extraction (as now edited to the main posting) and that it's a non-linear sketch graph, I still think Holmgrens figure gives a somewhat useful visual guide ...

Also, these are clearly 'simple' scenarios. I'd envisage that it could be useful to study each of these four - and decide whether one or two more simple scenarios are needed. Only then would we start to look at the complexities of how these scenarios interact, if say Countries or Regions 1 - 4 are each different mixes of Scenarios 1 - 4?

[handslive.livejournal.com]

Techno-explosion is really hard to take seriously. There aren't any obvious solutions to energy output that fall into this category, not even fusion.

Techno-stability is bit like hoping everyone on the planet starts behaving reasonably. This means I can't help thinking that likely scenarios fall below this line.

[purpletigron.livejournal.com]

Indeed, it's hard to see how - with typical USA, Canadian and UK lifestyles if extended to 7 billion humans currently using 3 - 5 times the resources which Earth can sustainably produce - we can carry on with 'business as usual'.

Oil is a remarkably energy dense and flexible 'fuel' (energy storage system) - sometimes called fossil sunlight. If we think about the long-term systems which went into converting sunlight into oil, it's hard to see how to replicate that quickly. Even where the technology seems feasible in theory, the political, logistic, commercial and other 'human' barriers seem insurmountable in the available time-frame.