We bought grid tied solar for our farm ten years ago but when power went out so did the solar so we added powerwalls five years ago. We have a small pig farm that sells to restaurants and direct to the public. The batteries are there to save my freezers if power goes out . Both the solar and the batteries have preformed flawlessly. With current electric rates the system has paid back its purchase price in energy produced to date. There is thousands of dollars of frozen product the system protects. The solar panels still have over a decade of life in them and hopefully the batteries last for another five years at least. With current electric rates that system would generate an additional $24,000 of energy. So system over its lifetime should produce double the unsubsidized purchase price.
I also bought an electric tractor which is trouble prone rather than trouble free, so being a first adapter isn’t always a smart move… but it is kinda fun.
No bunker here but maintaining a farm is some sort of resilience … if food calories count.
"This got me wondering: Who else is shoring up renewable power out of security—not climate—concerns?"
National security /defence departments the world over - well, among the richest and most militarized countries - must have gone down this same road on both the micro and macro scales. At one end of the spectrum, there are the national plans for reserves of essential materials, products etc, so that economies have a certain resilience to supply chain problems, price fluctuations. These things are often public. But there must also be unpublished reports and plans, and actual infrastructure and physical preparations in some cases, so that national societies and economies, and especially their key assets, power centres, etc, are not weakened relative to their enemies or rivals. Just as we know, for example, about how the US military has since the 1950s had an entire infrastructure set up so that it could continue to operate after an all-out nuclear attack, they must have adapted that over the years according to their changing perception of the threats and risks, and the technologies available to guard against them. I would bet that deep in the military archives there are some pretty interesting documents relative to our ecological predicament and measures to combat the different threats to power it may bring.
Yes Robert, a similar infrastructure was created in Britain, when Post Office Towers were built in major cities. Line-of-sight comms were enabled over great distances, interceptable by military radio masts on hills near bases. Deep underground "Regional Seats of Government" were constructed near the towers as safe evacuation retreats for Local Authorities. All well equipped and stocked up support long term secure living. Later on, nuclear blast resistant building technology appeared in the vicinity, ... only then were the public made aware, mostly by the alternative Press during the 1970's......
Yes, John Kerry is on it. Increased militartisation for the coming migration crisis. The US is already a militarised economy and hasn't invested in itself for decades - and what with the rise of BRICS, dedollarisation and propping up failing Israel- economic collapse may actually precede further problems at the borders. https://jowaller.substack.com/p/what-is-the-heartland-institute?utm_source=publication-search
Think you'll find that there are lots of things that the military are good at/have invested in for military reasons are very applicable to a greener future eg 'Leave no Trace' to remain undetected........
If by decentralized, renewable energy sources, one is referring to solar and wind, then one is fantasizing. These energy sources can never be “decentralized” because they are composed of raw materials which come from relatively few sources, globally, materials which are then refined, processed and turned into finished components through complex industrial systems which can only function at large scale. No wind turbines or solar panels will ever be produced by local small scale workshops. Local grids may become common but they will only be final distribution hubs for energy generated by devices produced by world girdling industries dependent on 6 continent supply chains. And as several guests on the podcast have made clear, solar and wind devices are not renewable in the literal sense. Because the resources required to build them are finite, so called “renewables” may not have much of a future, so the question of grids, local or otherwise, may be in the long term, moot.
Another point—as an international audience may or may not know, the US military establishment began issuing threat assessments years ago taking global warming very seriously, foreseeing various ways in which climate chaos will create tremendous social, economic and environmental disruptions which will create dire security problems for the US. Many have pointed out the military realists writing these reports are having no truck with climate denial and downplaying so rife in the civilian branches of the government…. But few seem to have noticed that none of these warnings seem to recommend that bold steps towards de-carbonizing be taken to forestall and prevent these security threats. Instead they are taken as a given, almost inevitable. Like all threat assessments, these warnings are aimed at increasing military appropriations. The defense establishment here in the US recognizes the reality of climate change, but almost seems to welcome it as just another opportunity for growing the military industrial complex.
Small scale wind power isn't tough to build at all, it's just a basic electric motor/generator. I've seen small turbines that were hand-built! Sure, you're not going to mine copper for wire yourself but the raw materials for a turbine are readily available as scrap; there's a ln abundance of electric motors and such thrown away that are repairable if someone has the skills. If course that's no solution for industrial power but I've seen people using them to recharge, eg, a 12v battery for a mobile home, things like that.
However,these thousand of so guys who will be clinging on at the poles don't seem realise that without a society to coast on they won't be rich or powerful nor do they get the problem of growing the food that humans are adapted to without pollinators nor do they understand the lack of oxygen from deforestation and agricultural runoff causing ocean dead zones killing plankton (which produces about half of atmospheric oxygen) will be an issue nor the get the unpredictable nature of hurricanes etc etc.
I trust Mother Earth will do the job properly and shut these fu$£ers up for good.
There is an apparent irony in the military being ahead of their political masters. The military is an amoral, authoritarian institution which exists pretty much on its own terms. The decision to create micro grids is coldly adaptive to perceived risks. Their size and budget means they have few impediments to enacting their decisions. Without any kind of judgment this has close parallels with China.
I think your analysis is very astute here. A lot of the technoelites see our future as larger versions of gated communities, and large swathes of uninhabitable planet as a price worth paying for maintaining control.
There's an important faction not talked about here, though, and not talked about enough, especially in more progressive circles.
There's a significant and powerful faction on the religious right that believes in Revalations as literal prophecy. These people may deny climate change, but in reality a world on fire and rivers of blood is the cue for the second coming and their ascension to heaven. Part of the unending support for Israel comes from this too - there's an interpretation that a greater Israel is necessary for the prophecy to come true, hence the weird phenomenon of pro-Israel religious fanatic white supremacists.
I think for most of us it's really hard to accept and understand how many people believe in religion fanatically, and in the sense of a kind of instructional document. But it's really important - Judaism, Islam, Christianity and Hindu all have fundamentalists with hands on huge levers of power who are absolutely driven by religious fervour and their interpretation of God (or Gods) words. We underestimate this at our peril.
A disproportionate amount of the 'covid' dissent that was deliberately promoted (even if by occasional banning) was from the Christian right. Russell Brand is praying to Jesus with Tucker Carlson and also with Jordan Peterson at Matt Taibbi's 'Rescue the Republic'. It is very weird.
The Christians pretend that evil forces want to flood their countries with non-white immigrants, to take away their rights to eat other animals, to make lots of babies, to holiday 6 times a year and to go abroad to ex colonial (now neocolonial) countries to see how poor they still are and to gawp at the few remaining wild animals herded into small areas.
God gave white man dominion over other animals and creation. He did not give it brown or black people (apart from a few coconuts), to women nor to homosexuals.
The support for Israel from Christian Zionists shows that a purging of the infidels is just what they have in mind.
If this happens as 1.2 billion, by 2050, mostly brown and black people trying to migrate north because of the climate crisis and then being shot and killed at the border: then so be it.
“God gave white man dominion over other animals and creation. He did not give it brown or black people (apart from a few coconuts), to women nor to homosexuals.” Yep. I don't think this strain of US thinking ever went away, either. Just stayed quieter for a few years but it's getting louder and louder now.
"An extractive system of endless growth demarcates that which is valuable and that which is not; that which is valuable is used up and produces waste; that which is not is destroyed to make room for value or waste."
"The World is a closed thing, cyclical, resonant, eternally-returning.," (that announce) is to be delivered into a system whose only aim is to violate the Cycle. Taking and not giving back, demanding that "productivity" and "earnings" keep on increasing with time, the System removing from the rest of the World these vast quantities of energy to keep its own tiny desperate fraction showing a profit: and not only mostly of humanity—most of the World, animal, vegetable and mineral, is laid waste in the process" (from Gravity's Rainbow by Thomas Pynchon)
Rachel, your words are like bread pudding after a meal in which no one had to die to enjoy . I believe in you for the future of humanity. thank you for what you do for all of us
Thanks, Sebastian, for the reminder windmills can be a local, homegrown technology. This kind of DIY approach to energy will play a big part in future adaptions to the crisis. I think we have to recognize that these strategies will be important in possible futures where electrical energy will be scarce and 24/7 power from vast grids and energy systems will be a thing of the past. Decentralized, localized adaptions of some contemporary technologies at small scale can be central to social survival once we give up on the dream of perpetuating into the far future a world that runs on 18 terawatts of power (Nate Hagens's estimate). We've used advanced complex technology like a bludgeon up to now--boys with toys beating nature into submission--time to get elegant and sophisticated instead.
Yes, lots is happening to prepare for the climate crisis they all know about-'For the American Security Project (of which John Kerry is a founding member), the primary objectives were:
A huge rebuilding of the United States’ military bases (which may be neutralised by rising sea levels)
Countering China in the Pacific (for access to resources) and
Preparing for a war with Russia in the newly-melted Arctic (there’s fossil fuels under there).
‘What will the designation of the climate crisis as a “national security threat” entail domestically? Last year, the ASP wrote that “Given that climate change will force more families to migrate, funding for border security should include improving facilities for holding and transporting migrants.” In other words, an expansion of the militarized border and network of detention centers, often condemned as “concentration camps.”
The Pentagon is the largest single polluter in the world, and the U.S. has historically insisted on exempting the military from any climate treaties. Just one B-52 bomber consumes as much fuel in an hour as an average car driver uses in seven years. As the Institute for Policy Studies wrote, “militarism and climate justice are fundamentally at odds”
while “climate change and border militarization are inextricably linked.”
We bought grid tied solar for our farm ten years ago but when power went out so did the solar so we added powerwalls five years ago. We have a small pig farm that sells to restaurants and direct to the public. The batteries are there to save my freezers if power goes out . Both the solar and the batteries have preformed flawlessly. With current electric rates the system has paid back its purchase price in energy produced to date. There is thousands of dollars of frozen product the system protects. The solar panels still have over a decade of life in them and hopefully the batteries last for another five years at least. With current electric rates that system would generate an additional $24,000 of energy. So system over its lifetime should produce double the unsubsidized purchase price.
I also bought an electric tractor which is trouble prone rather than trouble free, so being a first adapter isn’t always a smart move… but it is kinda fun.
No bunker here but maintaining a farm is some sort of resilience … if food calories count.
"This got me wondering: Who else is shoring up renewable power out of security—not climate—concerns?"
National security /defence departments the world over - well, among the richest and most militarized countries - must have gone down this same road on both the micro and macro scales. At one end of the spectrum, there are the national plans for reserves of essential materials, products etc, so that economies have a certain resilience to supply chain problems, price fluctuations. These things are often public. But there must also be unpublished reports and plans, and actual infrastructure and physical preparations in some cases, so that national societies and economies, and especially their key assets, power centres, etc, are not weakened relative to their enemies or rivals. Just as we know, for example, about how the US military has since the 1950s had an entire infrastructure set up so that it could continue to operate after an all-out nuclear attack, they must have adapted that over the years according to their changing perception of the threats and risks, and the technologies available to guard against them. I would bet that deep in the military archives there are some pretty interesting documents relative to our ecological predicament and measures to combat the different threats to power it may bring.
Yes Robert, a similar infrastructure was created in Britain, when Post Office Towers were built in major cities. Line-of-sight comms were enabled over great distances, interceptable by military radio masts on hills near bases. Deep underground "Regional Seats of Government" were constructed near the towers as safe evacuation retreats for Local Authorities. All well equipped and stocked up support long term secure living. Later on, nuclear blast resistant building technology appeared in the vicinity, ... only then were the public made aware, mostly by the alternative Press during the 1970's......
Yes, John Kerry is on it. Increased militartisation for the coming migration crisis. The US is already a militarised economy and hasn't invested in itself for decades - and what with the rise of BRICS, dedollarisation and propping up failing Israel- economic collapse may actually precede further problems at the borders. https://jowaller.substack.com/p/what-is-the-heartland-institute?utm_source=publication-search
Think you'll find that there are lots of things that the military are good at/have invested in for military reasons are very applicable to a greener future eg 'Leave no Trace' to remain undetected........
If by decentralized, renewable energy sources, one is referring to solar and wind, then one is fantasizing. These energy sources can never be “decentralized” because they are composed of raw materials which come from relatively few sources, globally, materials which are then refined, processed and turned into finished components through complex industrial systems which can only function at large scale. No wind turbines or solar panels will ever be produced by local small scale workshops. Local grids may become common but they will only be final distribution hubs for energy generated by devices produced by world girdling industries dependent on 6 continent supply chains. And as several guests on the podcast have made clear, solar and wind devices are not renewable in the literal sense. Because the resources required to build them are finite, so called “renewables” may not have much of a future, so the question of grids, local or otherwise, may be in the long term, moot.
Another point—as an international audience may or may not know, the US military establishment began issuing threat assessments years ago taking global warming very seriously, foreseeing various ways in which climate chaos will create tremendous social, economic and environmental disruptions which will create dire security problems for the US. Many have pointed out the military realists writing these reports are having no truck with climate denial and downplaying so rife in the civilian branches of the government…. But few seem to have noticed that none of these warnings seem to recommend that bold steps towards de-carbonizing be taken to forestall and prevent these security threats. Instead they are taken as a given, almost inevitable. Like all threat assessments, these warnings are aimed at increasing military appropriations. The defense establishment here in the US recognizes the reality of climate change, but almost seems to welcome it as just another opportunity for growing the military industrial complex.
Small scale wind power isn't tough to build at all, it's just a basic electric motor/generator. I've seen small turbines that were hand-built! Sure, you're not going to mine copper for wire yourself but the raw materials for a turbine are readily available as scrap; there's a ln abundance of electric motors and such thrown away that are repairable if someone has the skills. If course that's no solution for industrial power but I've seen people using them to recharge, eg, a 12v battery for a mobile home, things like that.
Yep, this is so by my reckoning too. It's called climate colonialism https://jowaller.substack.com/p/burning-fossil-fuels-is-the-plan?utm_source=publication-search ie continuing with the status quo IS the plan to depopulate and militarise.
However,these thousand of so guys who will be clinging on at the poles don't seem realise that without a society to coast on they won't be rich or powerful nor do they get the problem of growing the food that humans are adapted to without pollinators nor do they understand the lack of oxygen from deforestation and agricultural runoff causing ocean dead zones killing plankton (which produces about half of atmospheric oxygen) will be an issue nor the get the unpredictable nature of hurricanes etc etc.
I trust Mother Earth will do the job properly and shut these fu$£ers up for good.
There is an apparent irony in the military being ahead of their political masters. The military is an amoral, authoritarian institution which exists pretty much on its own terms. The decision to create micro grids is coldly adaptive to perceived risks. Their size and budget means they have few impediments to enacting their decisions. Without any kind of judgment this has close parallels with China.
The military is one of the few institutions that recognize the importance of contingency planning.
I think your analysis is very astute here. A lot of the technoelites see our future as larger versions of gated communities, and large swathes of uninhabitable planet as a price worth paying for maintaining control.
There's an important faction not talked about here, though, and not talked about enough, especially in more progressive circles.
There's a significant and powerful faction on the religious right that believes in Revalations as literal prophecy. These people may deny climate change, but in reality a world on fire and rivers of blood is the cue for the second coming and their ascension to heaven. Part of the unending support for Israel comes from this too - there's an interpretation that a greater Israel is necessary for the prophecy to come true, hence the weird phenomenon of pro-Israel religious fanatic white supremacists.
I think for most of us it's really hard to accept and understand how many people believe in religion fanatically, and in the sense of a kind of instructional document. But it's really important - Judaism, Islam, Christianity and Hindu all have fundamentalists with hands on huge levers of power who are absolutely driven by religious fervour and their interpretation of God (or Gods) words. We underestimate this at our peril.
You are definitely on to something.
A disproportionate amount of the 'covid' dissent that was deliberately promoted (even if by occasional banning) was from the Christian right. Russell Brand is praying to Jesus with Tucker Carlson and also with Jordan Peterson at Matt Taibbi's 'Rescue the Republic'. It is very weird.
The Christians pretend that evil forces want to flood their countries with non-white immigrants, to take away their rights to eat other animals, to make lots of babies, to holiday 6 times a year and to go abroad to ex colonial (now neocolonial) countries to see how poor they still are and to gawp at the few remaining wild animals herded into small areas.
God gave white man dominion over other animals and creation. He did not give it brown or black people (apart from a few coconuts), to women nor to homosexuals.
The support for Israel from Christian Zionists shows that a purging of the infidels is just what they have in mind.
If this happens as 1.2 billion, by 2050, mostly brown and black people trying to migrate north because of the climate crisis and then being shot and killed at the border: then so be it.
“God gave white man dominion over other animals and creation. He did not give it brown or black people (apart from a few coconuts), to women nor to homosexuals.” Yep. I don't think this strain of US thinking ever went away, either. Just stayed quieter for a few years but it's getting louder and louder now.
yep
"An extractive system of endless growth demarcates that which is valuable and that which is not; that which is valuable is used up and produces waste; that which is not is destroyed to make room for value or waste."
Truly a chilling thought.
brilliant! the only thing is Elon musk as an useful idiot is a too weak insult for his crimes. :-)
FYI this guy https://youtube.com/shorts/H610Eubwm-M?si=po3DtRch3Aomi4OL
"The World is a closed thing, cyclical, resonant, eternally-returning.," (that announce) is to be delivered into a system whose only aim is to violate the Cycle. Taking and not giving back, demanding that "productivity" and "earnings" keep on increasing with time, the System removing from the rest of the World these vast quantities of energy to keep its own tiny desperate fraction showing a profit: and not only mostly of humanity—most of the World, animal, vegetable and mineral, is laid waste in the process" (from Gravity's Rainbow by Thomas Pynchon)
Rachel, your words are like bread pudding after a meal in which no one had to die to enjoy . I believe in you for the future of humanity. thank you for what you do for all of us
Thanks, Sebastian, for the reminder windmills can be a local, homegrown technology. This kind of DIY approach to energy will play a big part in future adaptions to the crisis. I think we have to recognize that these strategies will be important in possible futures where electrical energy will be scarce and 24/7 power from vast grids and energy systems will be a thing of the past. Decentralized, localized adaptions of some contemporary technologies at small scale can be central to social survival once we give up on the dream of perpetuating into the far future a world that runs on 18 terawatts of power (Nate Hagens's estimate). We've used advanced complex technology like a bludgeon up to now--boys with toys beating nature into submission--time to get elegant and sophisticated instead.
Yes, lots is happening to prepare for the climate crisis they all know about-'For the American Security Project (of which John Kerry is a founding member), the primary objectives were:
A huge rebuilding of the United States’ military bases (which may be neutralised by rising sea levels)
Countering China in the Pacific (for access to resources) and
Preparing for a war with Russia in the newly-melted Arctic (there’s fossil fuels under there).
‘What will the designation of the climate crisis as a “national security threat” entail domestically? Last year, the ASP wrote that “Given that climate change will force more families to migrate, funding for border security should include improving facilities for holding and transporting migrants.” In other words, an expansion of the militarized border and network of detention centers, often condemned as “concentration camps.”
The Pentagon is the largest single polluter in the world, and the U.S. has historically insisted on exempting the military from any climate treaties. Just one B-52 bomber consumes as much fuel in an hour as an average car driver uses in seven years. As the Institute for Policy Studies wrote, “militarism and climate justice are fundamentally at odds”
while “climate change and border militarization are inextricably linked.”
https://jowaller.substack.com/p/what-is-the-heartland-institute?utm_source=publication-search
Hi Rachel, my partner Alice and I have an idea, we're calling it Care. Home. Farm. Please have a look at the guest post written by Alice on Chris Smaje's Small Farm Future blog:https://chrissmaje.com/2024/10/guest-post-care-home-farm/#comment-264494