Hello there fellow Swiss citizens, I’m making a post to inform and to talk about the energy crisis; the preparations that can be done to handle it more smoothly and the adaptations that will become necessary if the fossil fuel globalized system doesn’t go back to early January 2025. There will be some subjective points of view, I’ll try to remain as unbiased as possible, but I doubt it’ll content all readers. Introduction: We live in a system based on the flux of energy + materials, represented by money. This flux is getting constrained by geopolitical reasons currently (Hormuz’s Detroit, Russia-Ukraine conflict/invasion); and for other reasons, it’s unlikely that flux energy + materials will keep on growing because of exponential growth. As we dive into a bumpier road with some kind of mist, we’re leaving the era of stability with the worldwide trade that was backed/sponsored by military might of the USA. We’re now entering an era of more instability and unpredictability. Someone named “Olivier Hamant” speaks of it as the era of the “standard deviation” after the era of “average”. He’s been interviewed on the channel of someone called Nate Hagens “The great simplification”: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kzzr15cEg3o Nate Hagens also made a short movie, in this channel, to explain our issues with exponential growth and he searches for answers on how to adapt to this new era : https://youtu.be/-xr9rIQxwj4 . He also tried to make this 30mn video in a 4mn format. I know that at this point, some people will disagree and try to argue about how we’ll manage to always overcome limits; However I think that most of us, regardless of political ideology or life experience or studies, can come to the same conclusion : the world is getting more unstable. In the future, in Europe, it’s also probable that we will be constrained in fossil fuels because of dwindling discoveries of oil&gas worldwide, by the major oil corporations: https://theshiftproject.org/en/publications/oil-supply-europe/ https://oilprice.com/Energy/Energy-General/Global-Oil-Discoveries-Collapse-to-Decade-Lows-Despite-Frontier-Breakthroughs.html Short disclaimer: these links are here to prove my point that we’re not going to keep growing the GDP, but it’s not a binary all white/all black kind of thing. Nobody knows what’s going to happen, at what speed, for what complex supply chains. I say this because when I talk to people in real life, some of them tend to get emotional and try to rationalize it with extreme examples or binary thinking (it’s either all fine or we’ll soon all kill each other for food); it’s partly due to the cultural books, movies and tv-shows that we watched and makes us project post-apocalyptic lifestyle. Preparation: The Swiss government advises having some stocks at home, to be more able to handle unexpected crisis and also to have a bug-out bag, in case of localized emergency (flooding, fire, earthquake, etc.) : https://www.bwl.admin.ch/en/we-advise-emergency-supplies There are plenty of people that give explanations about how you can prepare further for water, food, security, etc. after they did some testing themselves. There is also the argument of paying now for the products that are likely to keep growing in prices in the following months, because of the issues of supply from fertilizers to some part of the world + the diesel supply limitations. Adaptation: This part will be much more my personal ideas from the people I listened to for 15 years. Given that we’re going into the future in an unstable world (bumpy road with a mist), the more we anticipate it, the better we’ll be. And to adapt, there are knowledge and tools that can be used : Low-techs : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Low_technology ; https://wiki.lowtechlab.org/wiki/Accueil Permaculture, agroforestry and similar ways to grow food and make your local environnement more resilient/robust : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Permaculture ; https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agroforestry For both these topics, I encourage you to read more about it. And I implore you, if you think these topics are too much on the left for you, to ignore it for a moment and to read about them. As an example, people often think of low-techs as someone using a modified bike to power something at his home (which is true), but low-techs are also a way forward for the various industries we require to maintain all of our infrastructure, be it in cities or in more rural places. In the idea of low techs, there is the idea of robustness, something that will be increasingly needed to handle the energy issues and the various unexpected crisis (weather events, supply chains issues, etc.). Here’s a link in French (sorry, I don’t know of an English speaker that talks about it like Olivier Hamant, previously mentioned: https://robustesse.org/ Again, I ask you to don’t push it aside immediately because it may look like “naïve” or “ecologist” other kind of projections. Making our territories robust and resilient will have to be mediation about some projects that are good for the ecology, and for others, it will not be the case. Conclusion: I don’t expect to persuade everyone that we’re entering a new kind of era. However, I’m hoping to give some data to other citizens in Switzerland, regardless of your canton or ideology. I’m an ecologist/collapsologist-amateur and I talk around me with people that go from the extreme left leaning, the center, to the extreme-rightwing white supremacy and try to motivate people to prepare and anticipate adaptation as much as possible. As someone I listened to said “If you’re naturally empathetic, that’s great; if not, just do it out of self-interest.” This quote is used in the concept/idea of preparing for the fact that we’re leaving the era of “growth of GDP” and that we need to adapt. The more motivated people have prepared/are adapting or mentally prepared to adapt, the more resilient and robust and secure you’ll be, in your territory/canton. Well, I tried to make it as synthetic and ordered as my brain can manage. I’m not used to writing studies or articles, but I hope I have given a few people some ideas about how to prepare and adapt with your family, friends and neighbors (even the ones you consider to be morons!). And perhaps I gave some ideas to some Swiss entrepreneurs (I managed to motivate some individuals in real life but never managed to convince someone that is managing an industry or a business with dozens of people). Also, the more you prepare for this new era, the more chances you’ll have to make your territory go towards the kind of system you’d prefer to see and live in (whatever it is, from democracies or collaborative systems to the most extreme authoritarian systems). I’m open to discussions, informations, critics, insults, etc. _\// submitted by /u/Grand_Dadais
Originally posted by u/Grand_Dadais on r/Switzerland