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Tumbling Tide: Population, Petroleum, and Systemic Collapse
Our world runs on fossil fuels. It is estimated that oil production will drop to half of the peak amount around 2030. What will happen as we reach the point where there is no practical way to get whatever is still in the ground? Fossil fuels are in decline, but recoverable reserves of metals are also becoming less plentiful. Electricity will be in decline worldwide because it is produced mainly with fossil fuels. Without mechanization, irrigation, and synthetic fertilizer, yields for crops of any sort drop considerably, and famine is inevitable; it will simply not be possible to maintain a global population of the present size. Those who expect to survive and prosper will be those who have mastered the art of subsistence farming. In Tumbling Tide, Peter Goodchild examines what life will look like in the post-peak world, exploring such topics as housing, food production, education, and politics, and delivers the troubling news that solar panels and vegetable patches won’t be enough. Tumbling Tide differs from similar books in the sense that it provides far more detail about the effects of peak oil in the coming decades, and examines the social effects — crime, cults, craziness, and chaos — that could stem from this crisis.
226 pages, Paperback
First published October 24, 2013
4 people want to read
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October 20, 2015
This is a doomer book, but rambles and lacks footnotes or hard data. The outline of this book is plausible and I’m sure it reflects what many people are thinking. This is a book that’s clearly on the right track, so if you’re totally new to the realm of “collapse” theories, you might want to take a look at it, but since I’m already quite immersed in the subject, it wasn’t of that much interest to me.
He talks about peak oil, global warming, and post-collapse economics, but in mostly vague ways. The survivalist scenarios he envisions, while theoretically possible, are just not plausible to me.
The title is well-chosen. When the lights go out (p. 47), nothing will work and there will be chaos. He discusses localization as one of the few solutions that makes sense. He discusses the world food situation, but not livestock. He discusses medicine, but refers to herbal therapies and “primitive medicine,” while ignoring nutrition. He is evidently a survivalist living in a rural area of Ontario, so he is not totally ignorant, but I don’t think this kind of thing is going to “scale up.”
He discusses different kinds of grains, and then discusses “putting meat on the table.” Buy your guns now, while industrial society still exists, but if everyone starts hunting post-collapse, there could be problems. Fortunately, not everyone will do it; they lack physical stamina, they lack skills, and they lack the cars and stuff to get them to the hunting grounds. Trapping and fishing are also possibilities, and don’t waste the hide of an animal you kill. He also discusses domesticated animals.
It’s more plausible to me that post-collapse we will still have a functioning government of some sort — probably not the government we want, but it will be there. The U. S. A. and Canada have exerted authority over vast tracts of land at much more primitive technological levels (like, 18th century and 19th century). We had governments during the middle ages and feudalism. So unless there really is a massive, “Station Eleven” type die-off, it’s more plausible that there will still be communities on which we will rely for our lives and safety. So all the old issues about fossil fuels, renewables, livestock agriculture as a cause of global warming and with huge nutritional negatives, and so forth, will still need to be debated in these communities.
We need a book on what life will be like post-collapse, but of course then we'd need to answer questions like "what collapses?" Is it just our political system, our economy, our civilization, or what? But this is a really broad subject because even though we know something's going to happen, there are too many variables to really predict what.
Fictional representations of this future include "Station Eleven" (really apocalyptic) and "The Windup Girl." If you're interested in the science, look at Richard Heinberg's "The Party's Over" (old but still useful, only modestly apocalyptic) or Ugo Bardi's book "Extraction." Also, Joseph Tainter on "The Collapse of Complex Societies," Peter Turchin's books on "Secular Cycles" (co-authored with Sergei Nefedov, as I recall) and "War and Peace and War," and then Craig Dilworth's book "Too Smart for Our Own Good."
He talks about peak oil, global warming, and post-collapse economics, but in mostly vague ways. The survivalist scenarios he envisions, while theoretically possible, are just not plausible to me.
The title is well-chosen. When the lights go out (p. 47), nothing will work and there will be chaos. He discusses localization as one of the few solutions that makes sense. He discusses the world food situation, but not livestock. He discusses medicine, but refers to herbal therapies and “primitive medicine,” while ignoring nutrition. He is evidently a survivalist living in a rural area of Ontario, so he is not totally ignorant, but I don’t think this kind of thing is going to “scale up.”
He discusses different kinds of grains, and then discusses “putting meat on the table.” Buy your guns now, while industrial society still exists, but if everyone starts hunting post-collapse, there could be problems. Fortunately, not everyone will do it; they lack physical stamina, they lack skills, and they lack the cars and stuff to get them to the hunting grounds. Trapping and fishing are also possibilities, and don’t waste the hide of an animal you kill. He also discusses domesticated animals.
It’s more plausible to me that post-collapse we will still have a functioning government of some sort — probably not the government we want, but it will be there. The U. S. A. and Canada have exerted authority over vast tracts of land at much more primitive technological levels (like, 18th century and 19th century). We had governments during the middle ages and feudalism. So unless there really is a massive, “Station Eleven” type die-off, it’s more plausible that there will still be communities on which we will rely for our lives and safety. So all the old issues about fossil fuels, renewables, livestock agriculture as a cause of global warming and with huge nutritional negatives, and so forth, will still need to be debated in these communities.
We need a book on what life will be like post-collapse, but of course then we'd need to answer questions like "what collapses?" Is it just our political system, our economy, our civilization, or what? But this is a really broad subject because even though we know something's going to happen, there are too many variables to really predict what.
Fictional representations of this future include "Station Eleven" (really apocalyptic) and "The Windup Girl." If you're interested in the science, look at Richard Heinberg's "The Party's Over" (old but still useful, only modestly apocalyptic) or Ugo Bardi's book "Extraction." Also, Joseph Tainter on "The Collapse of Complex Societies," Peter Turchin's books on "Secular Cycles" (co-authored with Sergei Nefedov, as I recall) and "War and Peace and War," and then Craig Dilworth's book "Too Smart for Our Own Good."
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