Doom & Solutions

While May the 4th is Star Wars day and May 5th is Cinco de Mayo, today felt like a Doom day, at least when the well written articles I found were all very Doom oriented. So, on the announcement of ‘Doom articles till 2’, these three:

Ukraine is looking at tapping their shale gas reserves.
The Transition could be pretty awful, and we have no real backup plan.
Crop yields decline with global warming, even with increased CO2.

And of course, with doom comes The Doom Song.

And all of these are focused on problems - some unexamined ones in these links include attempts to disband the EPA and ongoing problems of food supplies worldwide, particularly with ethanol - and that our common idea of substitution just won’t cut it.

But! I promised (to myself, mostly) that I would add some solutions-oriented articles as well - real solutions, hopefully, and not just feel-good solutions. Because if we recognize that society as we know it a) is no good and needs changing and b) might collapse, we *can* actively work on that (I think). We’re going to need a lot of reskilling - more of us need to know how to grow food, raise some animals (bees and chickens come to mind), and make and fix things. But we can train them (particularly if we start now). We need to figure out what materials that we will need (as opposed to that we will want) are not available locally - and how to get them. Here are guides for figuring out those needs and what skills already exist.
We’ll probably need to live in cities or towns - the idea of the log cabin in the woods is great for self sufficiency, but it’s a poor model for everyone, and it’s much more dependent on fossil fuels for any missing needs. Unless you’re totally self-sufficient, it makes little sense - and even if you are, wouldn’t you want a community around? We know a lot about making good public spaces, for both the transition and the end result.
And finally, we need to think about a steady state economy, and what we *can* do to shift our policies towards one - and we get to vote next week!

These solutions are not as distinct or as simple to deal with as the problems in the articles they follow - reading about horrible real problems and comprehending them is one thing, but actually figuring out the complex solutions is a very different one. The other aspect is that while the problems are part of a global economy with massive digital connections and material flows, the solutions will be more regional and more specific - and there aren’t as many overarching articles for that. The key points, though, might be summarized here (as they have been at a lot of other places):
-Use less oil
-Own less stuff
-Own better stuff
-Have backup plans that don’t involve electricity for everything
-Learn about things and talk about them with people