REAL Green Adaptation

Time Travel

Where will we end up and when?

“EDWARDS’S GREAT WEST AND HER COMMERCIAL METROPOLIS, A GENERAL VIEW OF THE WEST, AND A COMPLETE HISTORY OF ST. LOUIS, FROM THE LANDING OF LIGUESTE, IN 1764, TO THE PRESENT TIME”

“Entered according to the Act of Congress, in the year 1860 Page 245”

“For more than a year after St. Louis was founded, the in habitants were contented and happy, and lived in a state of perfect harmony. There were no statutes, no lawgivers, no prisons. There were a few leading inhabitants who were looked upon in the light of patriarchs by the rest, to whom were submitted any little differences that would arise, and whose opinions had all the force of judicial decisions.”

“The people who formed the first settlement at St. Louis were a different people from those which form the present population of the Great Metropolis of the West. Almost all of them were natives of the province of Louisiana or Canada, and consequently from their childhood had been unaccustomed to the luxuries of life and were strangers to the artificial wants incident to older countries, and created by the indulgences of a more advanced stage of civilization. Divested of all extravagance in their wishes, they did not pursue wealth with the devotion so characteristic of modern day. They did not make it a god, for whom they were ready to sacrifice all of their temporal comforts and peril their eternal welfare. Contented with little, they had no motive to great exertion, and when their simple desires were satisfied, they endeavored to cultivate the art of being happy with each other.”

“At that early time there was a fraternal bond which united the community. There was but little division of interest, there were no castes of society, no temptations to test human weakness. All were on an equality, with the same habits and tastes. Their little cabins, formed by logs set upon their ends, and then roofed in, were the very rendezvous of happiness. The dance, the festive song, the uncontrolled mirth, all bore evidence that their spirits were untrammeled by the selfish cares of life, and reveled in the sans souci ecstasy of simple pleasures. Enjoyment was the aim and end of their being; and though they were woefully deficient in mental cultivation, their tastes did not flow into those vicious channels so characteristic of an ignorant people; they were marked by simplicity and untainted by degradation.”

“Such were the characteristics of the first settlers of St. Louis, who, though settling in a wilderness, and suffering the almost numberless deprivations inseparable from an infant colony, yet enjoyed a larger measure of happiness, and had less of culpable frailties than the inhabitants who now dwell in the city they founded.”

That passage in a nutshell is the REAL Green local of people and place. This wisdom is something to reflect on for the individual and small community. It is of a time that can’t be replicated but in a future world of decline a possible view of a new human period of enlightenment that is not technical but instead spiritual. Affluence will decline but spiritual community will grow.

Mental time travel fascinates me. Imagining an earlier time is part of what REAL Green focuses on because it seeks a merger of the best of the new and old in a hybridization for the journey back.

I am of a different breed because I do not see a sci-fi travel to the futuristic world of robots and super intelligence. I see a return to earlier times. I see a new respect for our immediate ancestors. Imagine the life of your grandparents. Many aspects of their time period will be part of our first step back except the momentum of growth they felt will be instead a feeling of forced degrowth.

The post above commenting on frontier St. louis in 1764 was written by Edwards in 1860 St. Louis, Missouri. I hope for a return to the simplicity and happiness of spirit described in Edward’s post.

My REAL Green homestead of 300 acres diminishes swiftly without fuel and purchases of supplies. Granted I have a lot to fall back on if these modern necessities end, but my pseudo permaculture life would quickly become overwhelmingly challenging without the basics of fossil energy and global products. I am accustomed to modern comforts like AC that are maintained by a system of professionals and globally sourced parts. My prep inventory would deplete within a year, but I do have something compared to many who have no idea how exposed they are.

I find comfort in interacting with poorer people that are around here. This is the Ozarks and there are still lots of lower income people. I like their simplicity but I don’t want to be poorer. My effort is to find relative simplicity without a crash in my living standard. You can achieve this on the margins. This is good enough for the first step down to what will be a world battered by forced degrowth.

This coming drift into poverty can be sugar coated somewhat with the understanding that the spiritual of meaning will increase. Moderns have been spoiled by affluence. The stripping to our naked souls in forced poverty will be purifying. The spiritual requires purification to attain grace. Grace being the acceptance and clarity of our proper place. The beginning of this process will mean more darkness before the dawn of meaning. There will be basic needs that will not be satisfied, and pain and suffering will be all around. It will take time for the bright light of spirituality to fill the vacuum of poverty with community and purpose.

I wonder if time travel is even possible because how do you power down a high-tech global civilization without dangerous outcomes. Nuclear spent fuel going critical and cities depopulating because they no longer function can only be catastrophic. Navigating this will be unimaginably difficult. I hope for a gentler decline with adaptation, but physics of chaos means the nature of decline usually involves dramatic and unforeseen change.

Instead of building more of these technical wonders of AI and robots, we should be deconstructing them if the age of decline is a coming reality. Yet, this is not possible proactively on so many levels at the macro. Some regions will fare better and within these regions some locals will adapt better. REAL Green acknowledges decline and lives modest decline now so when and if decline happens at least in the initial stages a less difficult living is possible.

Can modern man just slow down a little? This is why I hope for the AI bubble to burst. I hope for a diminished globalism. Not a collapse but a wrinkle that forces the world into an adjustment. This would be the first step down. This would be an emergency with people in crisis but still supplied. Systems still functioning but no longer growing. A generalized period of increasing poverty with an end to the modern allusions of grandeur so characteristic of today’s narrative.

I do not relish this. You may think because I am prepped, I would be unconcerned, but this is not the case. I live more aware than others because of the wisdom I have attained from living this life of green prepping for two decades. I have a deep understanding of just how fragile even my fully prepped permaculture homestead is. To make matters worse I am aging and weaker by the year. Decline and collapse is a young man’s game. I do have wisdom and experience that the young lack. I am more accepting of death because I am closer to my natural end.

The time travel I dwell on in wonderment and longing may not be for me but for a generation hence. It is possible I die before I experience a significant loss of comforts and security. I have been living this prepper life for 26 years and have seen crisis come and go. What is another 20 years which will put me in my 80s? I may not go through loss and may in fact have robots to work the farm in a few years but one day in the not too distant future these robots will be relics of a hubristic time of futurist fantasies of our present day.

If by chance and luck modern man navigates his bottleneck of his own making, I can see in my mind’s eye a place where people can return to the period of simple happiness albeit in hardship like the first St. Louis settlers experienced. This journey back will not allow us to take all the wonders we have today. So much knowledge and things will be lost. Yet, if simple happiness is achieved it will be worth it. The “art of being happy with each other” is the Kingdom spoken about in Christianity. That is where salvation dwells.

Dawn

Seven years ago I wrote “REAL Green Start”

REAL Green Start

What I said there is as true now as then. 204 posts later and I am giving you conclusions which in reality is present in REAL Green Start. This is then about the journey not the destination.

Do not undertake REAL Green unless the lifestyle appeals to you. REAL Green is not possible for the majority because most live an urban life. Many struggle to maintain the life they have. Of course, parts of REAL Green are available to all especially the spirituality. REAL Green is not the only way of life. It is meant for a few who inhabit micro climes of permaculture localism.

I would compare my conclusions to getting older. Once in your sixties you begin to slow down with age both physically and mentally. A kind of acceptance sets in for the inevitable end that occurs as one ages. This end is not just death but also the end of capabilities as you age. REAL Green embraces the end of techno man in the same way.

If at this point you are still interested, it could mean REAL Green interests you on an academic level. This means you seek to understand this alternative view of things because of intellectual curiosity or an innate desire to seek the truth.

I recommend this read for a primer on the age of decline. I distilled down 25 pages to 5 for the points of interest to me. Most telling is at the very end his conclusions which are REAL Green conclusions.

PARKING THE THESIS, Posted on July 1, 2026

#327: Surplus Energy Economics

This in a nutshell covers the macro decline of human civilization in the realm of the physical or what I call man’s human pole of science. This decline is subtle. Many of you will not notice it except around the margins where affordability impacts you.

The significant changes from this tipping over may not even affect you before you die. I am in my early 60’s and it is likely I will not see the worst albeit at anytime this overextended world may self-destruct. I fear my kids will see the worst. This is how quickly decline will accelerate.

This article covers well the inevitability of decline that a growth-based system on a finite planet must eventually experience. We are bamboozled with tech advancements especially these days with AI. I would make a point that what tech has done is made us weaker. We are prisoners of our comforts. We have become lazy from affluence. If life does get hard many of us will not have what it takes to negotiate a hard dose of reality.

One of my most important conclusions is adapt now to this decline. Beat the rush and embrace a tougher life now. I show in REAL Green that the lifestyle is gratifying if you understand the reasoning behind increased discomfort and workload. This is a keystone of REAL Green. Decline in place and find dignity in lower affluence. Embrace relative poverty to realize a spiritual windfall. This is simple and boring and why it is so hard.

REAL Green is about a permaculture homestead in localism around or near a small town. It is about community not the lone wolf prepper. REAL Green is green prepping. What is green is more prepped. Here green means closer to nature not EV’s and solar panels. Prep for decline and be green for spiritual enhancement.

REAL Green is relative and realistic because this world is not conducive to this way of life. The status quo is drenched in carbon energy and techno path dependencies. REAL Green if properly pursued, is not profitable in the way the world works. There are many opportunity costs where your time and money could be better spent in regard to affluence.

This alternative life is beset with inconsistencies because you must use the status quo to leave it. There will be incongruous juxtapositions all around. The surreal will dominate with paradoxes. This is because you are choosing a way of life that goes against the status quo of growth and manifest destiny.

We are not going to the stars and AI will not usure in a 4^th industrial revolution except for but a moment in history. These last efforts at immortality will hasten decline. They will darken spirituality but will provide the seed bed for a spiritual awakening. Man will exhaust his drive to control and meddle with the force of life. It is darkest just before dawn.

What you will find is a new road of truth that the status quo can’t see. This is a spiritual journey. This other pole of mankind has long been neglected. I am not so much talking religion as the metaphysical. I am talking of the sacred which can only be approached. REAL Green is not a religion it is meant to strengthen your unique individual higher power.

The spiritual is where the new force of growth is. A new enlightenment is dawning in human consciousness. Our headlong drive into a techno driven world has brought spiritual darkness. REAL Green recognizes the spiritual is a force of nature. It is hardwired into our DNA. We are a moral people, and this is how we got to where we are at. This force can’t be restrained.

Transhumanism is not compatible with this awakening so to the degree you can disconnect and triage tech from your life is where you will increase your openness to this new age. Relatively and realistically turn away from tech but understand you must dwell within this techno world.

If you have ever had a spiritual experience or felt metaphysical experiences, then you are feeling connection to this power. Science is of no use here and in fact hinders spirituality. This is not a judgement on science but on scientism. REAL Green seeks a balance to these two poles of the human duality. In this age of transhumanism, balance is found by a wisdom of less. Less tech and science is always preferable in this age of excess.

The conclusion then is 80 percent attitude. This will drive an effort to adapt and accept a world tipping over. The activity this attitude will drive will then support this conversion. The results will make this hard road more palatable. You will find strength to do hard things and when the day is done find spiritual satisfaction to live to die another day.

Surplus Energy Economics

Posted on July 1, 2026

PARKING THE THESIS

#327: Surplus Energy Economics

Today, through the application of a series of fundamental precepts, we can know, and at very high levels of confidence, that the economy has stopped expanding, and is heading into contraction.

What we also know is that this process of economic inflexion will be accompanied by crises, which might be financial, social, geopolitical or, in all probability, a combination of all three.

We cannot, of course, know exactly when this will happen, but there are plenty of reasons for supposing that the processes leading to this crisis are accelerating. We need to be clear that the ending and reversal of growth can only end in crisis.

The idea, for instance, that there is some kind of temporary and fixable “crisis” in the “cost of living” is ceasing to persuade, mainly because it isn’t true. Governments don’t have “answers” to this problem, because no such answers exist within current political parameters. Worsening hardship, insecurity and inequality are undermining the foundations of Western social and political stability.

International relations, meanwhile, have been degenerating into intensifying competition for scarce and dwindling resources. The financial system has been reaching dizzying new levels of absurdity, with investors now giving serious credence to ideas like mining asteroids, manufacturing on the Moon, travelling to Mars and building data centres in space.

First, though, we must be quite clear that nothing happens ‘quickly’ in the economics of energy, and that a successor to fossil fuels won’t be found in any sudden moment of ‘technology saves the day’

The lessons of this history are that energy evolution happens very gradually, and that each progression has required the foundational technologies of its predecessor. There are no ‘lightbulb moments’ and, if we were to find a successor to hydrocarbons – a successor that would ensure seamless economic transition – we would have needed to have found it no later, perhaps, than the 1970s, the 1980s or, at best, the 1990s for it to be ready today.

For various reasons, neither has taken over from fossil fuels, and time has run out. The very idea that some new discovery will instantly or even quickly transform our energy and economic future is ludicrous.

Beyond the comparatively gradual evolution of the economy, the key point to be taken from this sequence is the essential energy causation of economic trends. This, as we shall see, is where the parabolic trajectory of the Energy Cost of Energy

This precept of the materiality of services tell us that the idea that growth in the relative importance of services in proportion to goods can reduce the materiality of the economy is completely fallacious. So, for that matter, is any notion that we can somehow “de-couple” economic activity from the use of energy, a logical impossibility given that the economy IS an energy system.

Our second precept is that of continuity. Whilst some material products are consumed, others either wear out or reach the ends of their useful lives. What we are describing is a continuous process of creation, consumption, disposal and replacement.

Our next principle, therefore, is the primacy of energy. The physical economic system operates by using energy to convert other raw materials into products, artefacts and infrastructures. Nothing that has any utility whatsoever can be produced without the use of energy.

Since money is a claim on products and services, it is, by definition, a claim on the energy required to supply them. Likewise, debt, as a ‘claim on future money’, is in reality a claim on future energy.

In all instances of inflation, deflation or default, explanations are to be found in shifts and stresses in the relationship between the financial and the physical.

In reality, this concept of “free” energy is nonsense. Energy has no value at all until it is put to use, and this requires a supply infrastructure, extending from wells and refineries at one end of the spectrum to solar panels, wind turbines, power storage systems and grids at the other.

All of this infrastructure is material, and nothing material can be created, operated, maintained or replaced without the use of energy. What this means is that, whenever energy is accessed for our use, some of this energy is always consumed in the access process, and is not available for any other economic purpose.

This “consumed in access” component, stated as a percentage of total supply, is known in Surplus Energy Economics as the Energy Cost of Energy. Trend ECoEs have already risen sharply, from 2.0% of energy accessed in 1980 to more than 11% today, which goes a very long way towards explaining the troubled economic conditions of our times.

We must never forget, when considering the technological dimension, that the potential of technology is always bounded by the laws of physics, within an envelope of possibility set by the characteristics of materials and the laws of thermodynamics.

Once the benefits of reach and scale have been exhausted, a new driver takes over the direction of ECoEs. This driver is depletion, which describes a natural preference for using lowest-cost resources first, and leaving costlier alternatives for later.

Renewables fit within this sequential process, since they cannot be developed without recourse to legacy energy from fossil fuel sources. Despite claims to the contrary, renewables are not a discrete successor to hydrocarbons.

The problem with renewables is that, far from providing a qualitative advance on fossil fuel energy, they cannot be detached from it, and do not boast meaningful superiorities over it. Renewables can be used for comparatively light industrial activity, such as the assembly of components, but cannot undertake the ‘heavy lifting’ in the economy. What this means is that renewable energy is not “renewable” in the sense that it can be wholly detached from the use of fossil fuels. Renewables have a significant future role, and one that can be finessed to advantage, but are not a self-sufficient successor to carbon energy.

this conversion ratio has been trending gradually downwards, which informs us that the quality of the non-energy resource base has been depleting slightly more rapidly than the broad swathe of conversion technologies has been advancing. What this means, for example, is that ore grades have declined more quickly than mining methods have improved, and that agricultural land has degraded more rapidly than farming techniques have progressed.

Looking ahead, the working assumption made here is that a changing prioritization of energy use – in favour of necessities and away from discretionaries – is likely to flatten the forward curve of conversion ratios. But it’s equally possible that the effects of environmental degradation on the quality of the non-energy resource base might cause the downwards trajectory to steepen.

What we can see in Fig. 5B is the real explanation for the non-temporary, non-“crisis” in the “cost of living”. Average prosperity per capita, long stagnant at best, has now inflected downwards, whilst the real costs of essentials have been rising relentlessly.

Looking ahead, we can see how the unfolding downturn in prosperity combines with rises in the real costs of essentials to impose severe leveraged compression on the affordability of discretionaries (Fig. 5C).

Thus far, discretionary consumption has been propped up by runaway credit expansion, and this leads us into the next phase of our analysis, which is the impending failure of the credit backed simulacrum of ‘business as usual’.

The loss of growth thus has profound psychological and political implications far beyond the simply material. With growth ending, we will have to “own” the consequences of our misjudgements and excesses, relinquish notions of seamless generational improvement, and address once more the vexed questions of inequality and redistribution.

we were now trapped within the variable geometry of rising debt and stagnating output.

It’s very important that we remember, at this point, that assets only ever command paper values, and can never be monetised in the aggregate. The only possible buyers for the entirety of the stock market, or for the whole of a nation’s housing stock, are the same people to whom these already belong.

Classification of these fallacies has at least the merit of informing us about the ways in which denial will fail. Collective faith in technology will be undermined just as monetary excess pushes the financial system ever closer to collapse. Absolute faith in the potential of technology is already starting to wane, not least as the enshittification of the ‘ads and algorithms’ business model pushes Big Tech into massive investment in AI, as well as into making claims about the technological future which increasingly strain credulity.

Markets that place any faith at all in space tourism, lunar manufacturing, the mining of asteroids, data centres in space and travelling to Mars – and that buy in to AI promises that far exceed available resources – are markets that have already travelled a long way down the rabbit-hole of wishful thinking and implausibility.

The potential efficiencies of wind turbines and solar panels are governed, respectively, by Betz’ Law and the Shockley-Quiesser Limit, and best practice is now about as close to these maxima as we are likely to get. The issue of storage, connected to the problem of intermittency, is essentially a matter of portability, and the limits of possibility are set by what we might call the Energy Cost of Storage. The mathematics here are complex, but what emerges from them is that renewables are not a qualitative improvement on hydrocarbon energy, and cannot provide the kind of economic uplift that was experienced when oil took over from coal.

Financial collapse, of itself, will be a game-changer in a broader adaptation to the implications of negative growth. Vast amounts of paper wealth, and the influence that goes with them, will be destroyed, and the structural shift away from discretionary consumption will accelerate.

CONCLUSIONS

None of the foregoing need mean that a post-growth economy is unmanageable. A perfectly plausible post-growth model exists, one in which top-down, centralised institutions fail, and are replaced by localised, bottom-up alternatives, which operate at a more human scale, and are more in keeping with environmental sustainability. The astute will be starting to create these localised alternatives even before over-centralised systems collapse.

At the same time, and as the affordability of discretionary (non-essential) products and services retreats, an economy increasingly starved of surplus energy will become progressively more labour-intensive.

Mexican Standoff

Life can be strange even for REAL Green that seeks surreal for footing. I have been rereading all my writings that go back to August 6, 2019. For several years I published something weekly so I have a pile of paper. I am doing this to leave something on paper for somebody someday. In my opinion the digital will deteriorate quickly. Paper has a much longer shelf life. I am not a writer. I am more a modern-day green shaman living on the edge of civilization which for me is spiritual not physical. Physically I am just a normal guy albeit a bit odd.

I am amazed at how relevant and useful my writings are. I have not revisited my writings until a few weeks ago because I am not a writer, so I feel a kind of disappointment at what I have written as less than quality. Yet, rereading what I wrote turned out to be a real pleasure. In fact, I feel inspired by the forces of nature that I allowed to flow through me. Being a green shaman means embracing the land and its low-level power. What I wrote was what this power pushed me to write. It is from this power not me.

Yea, that sounds nutter and is but look around you and at all the nutter that is nuttier. I find modern life absurd mainly because I live in the surreal of REAL Green. I see things differently because I live a way of life that purposely is a satire of modern life we are so proud of.

I remain anonymous and desire no reward not that REAL Green is worth anything. This is mainly because I do not feel any of this is mine. I do not want to win the lottery. I am more interested in seeking simplicity. I seek a wisdom of less. I want no recognition even if REAL Green amounted to anything.

Anyway, the reason I am posting this latest post is the odd occurrence of multiple articles on the current Iran conflict coinciding with my present position of rereading my REAL Green posts (see end for articles). I just finished 3 posts that discuss collapse from December 2021.

Collapse Chronicles

All-Down

Green Decline

These posts are very timely and worth a read. I did not go into detail about collapse because there are so many possible locations, degrees and durations. There are large books in my library on the subject. I chose to REAL Green it instead.

Collapse is a process and it is active currently. I call it the decline process. It should be mentioned that decline is much more rapid than growth because of the turbulence of the forces of chaos which are abandonment, dysfunction, and irrational. There is no formula for this, but this process is not all noise. There is also signal and REAL Green seeks the signal that is a fractal of the sacred.

I am rereading REAL Green collapse posts, and we are now in a very dangerous time. More dangerous than Covid which was a grand elite lie of the globalist left. The dangers are hinted at in the news. There are clear facts about what is going on. These facts are dealt with in a cavalier detached way. Markets are at all time highs to make this time even more absurd. It centers around the significant fossil fuel resources in the middle east being restricted and in danger of being destroyed.

We as a civilization are pushing energy boundaries. It reminds me of Chernobyl. They tested that system and lost control. If the energy systems of the world get drawn down too far there could be some dangerous results which is obvious. We have never gone this far which is less obvious. This may be nothing but worth reflection, nonetheless.

It appears last I looked that a memo of understanding has been agreed upon but that memo is different for each side. Even if this energy bottleneck is resolved there will be problems for many months. This is an example of Peak Oil but not the geologic but instead the economic and geopolitical. Peak oil is alive and well but scoffed at these days.

If this restriction is not resolved there could be a systematic bifurcation where localized energy failures that propagate. In this global world of unstable confidence and just in time value chains this is not something to take lightly. Always remember confidence is liquidity.

The fact that we got to this point should be a wake-up call for some of you of the realities of a world running into a brick wall. My latest posts were on AI which I feel is a bubble that will burst. The sooner the better. If AI proceeds too far it will not be the machine that takes over and kills us.

AI will be the slow boil of losing education, skills, and human networks given over to the machine for safe keeping that risks a waking up one day to a world of dysfunction because the machine quit working. Complexity and complicated have a sweet spot. An AI world to me is a world teetering on collapse the more it is incorporated into our daily lives. Oil is similar in that things quit when it quits. Oil is finite and located poorly.

I recommend REAL Green for those who can and have the right stuff. I am a REAL Green master of green prepping, but I am no longer what I was. I am now in my early 60s and slowing down. I have lots of built-up infrastructure and experience but a lot less energy. My 18 year old boys have the energy and muscle but not much interest. Basically, I am just a preacher of this way of life now. I am keeping up with my permaculture homestead but just barely. I don’t see me continuing this effort into my 70s.

So, I am going to end this by saying very few of you can be REAL Green. Even fewer with the right stuff will do it because it is a road of much sacrifice with mostly a spiritual reward. I am not even recommending this for many people because unless the lifestyle appeals to you if will be a downcycle of personal value. I will say this if you are enjoying life, give thanks for all those special things you have right here right now because they might be gone tomorrow.

Reading list:

https://www.zerohedge.com/geopolitical/when-grid-dies-how-single-blackout-could-unravel-modern-world

https://www.zerohedge.com/markets/meet-americas-largest-doomsday-bunker-community

https://www.zerohedge.com/political/why-stable-systems-fail-illusion-institutional-control

https://www.zerohedge.com/markets/japan-crude-imports-fall-66-record-low

Underestimating the Challenges of Avoiding a Ghastly Future

Life without oil: The Strait of Hormuz crisis is a warning for global systems under strain

Everyone should read what this Exxon executive has to say about the oil price surge coming in the next 2 weeks…

#324: The looming crash | Surplus Energy Economics

Demons become Angels

We all have demons. In many cases these demons are in the mind. Those things that cause mental pain and suffering. In a reconciliation with acceptance grounded in humility combined with a going forth in newfound wisdom, transformational experience can result. I am speaking here of the spiritual and of the sacred of the individual, but this applies to the macro too. Meaning and truth from experience result in wisdom. A wisdom that is a decision process of what to keep and what to reject. This process can create angels which are serendipitous. Demons become angels.

There is no denying that tech has been our collective angel. It has saved us from so much pain and suffering. It has given us hope in the future. It is also taking us like a boiling frog to the cliff of a status quo shift from advancement to decline. Currently tech is on a revolutionary course that may destroy us. I say revolutionary because it is now self-organizing without real constraints.

It is my view that this process of change is without the basic wisdom of reflecting on what knowledge to keep and what to reject except around the margins. This is most apparent with AI which I have given several posts on, but it is not confined to AI. It is also as basic as the modern car culture that has made globalism possible. It is basically the complexity that we are embedded with more generally. All those things that bring relatively affordable and reliable food, water and shelter to us. Mainly from fossil fuels, advanced materials, and the grid. A grid that is of power and digital.

This complexity exposure risks failure far more than the threat of AI applications of autonomy and performance turning on us. There are many warnings of the machine turning on us once it achieves the singularity of transhumanism. What is more likely to turn on us is a vast investment in a network that can’t be sustained resulting in a bifurcation of destructive change where abandonment, irrational, and dysfunction cascade. This is present even without AI in our complex global culture of just-in-time support but increasingly this complex is now far more exposed with the huge AI bubble.

It is my basic opinion from my life system of REAL Green that this AI bubble of both finance and tech will be stopped in its tracks by basic constraints of human confidence, resources, and economics. It is often the weakest links that bring a system down. The AI bubble has so many weak links. One of the weakest is our civilizational complexity itself. It is apparent resources and capital may be a hard limit, but complexity is less understood. Resources and the capital threat appear less immediate. The complexity issue is less understood but may be more immediate.

The complexity issue points to a door passed through and then a return is no longer possible. We may have created an enhanced system that fails without a backup plan. Many important skills and hard-won knowledge could be lost in a relatively short period of time. Vital resources used up and mal invested in a way of life with no future.

I am speaking of that angel that are those wonderful things both abstract and physical that give our world a feeling of comfort and enjoyment. This angel may become our demon if the AI revolution adapts civilization as the technocrats and tech oligarchs wish for. Robots and an artificial general intelligence may be just that switch which flips an angel to a demon haunting our collective soul with collapse.

I want to offer hope to you that entertain my REAL Green adaptation. This hope I offer is that this AI bubble will burst soon and the result will be painful but longer term useful. I am also speaking of the related renewable and battery tech driving the energy transition. That bubble has burst but has achieved some great tech for the macro decline process that the planet and human civilization is in. This AI demon may hit the wall of constraints both physical and abstract that serendipitously stop the unrestrained revolution of technology. This is the last frontier that could end our civilizational growth based mal adaption fantasy.

The angel of this is some very useful tech that can be applied to powering down our growth-based system. A way of life of manifest destiny which is a way of life without a future. We are still going to need growth to adapt to decline that will be the mess of a failing modern life. Modern life to me is an everything bubble but one that has created some very powerful tech that if reoriented with hard-won wisdom could make the decline process less swift and dramatic. The survival of a species is dictated by its resilience to the speed and depth of a shock.

I have no idea if this demon we have created will end up being an angel. If what is occurring right now were to be stopped very soon before its infection into the vital organs of civilization the resulting and remaining capabilities could help us through the bottleneck ahead of a failure of the narrative of unending growth in a finite system. If a wisdom that comes out of this hypothetical crisis is strong enough to overcome the cascading decline of abandonment, irrational, and dysfunction then we may have an angel of transformation to a new mankind post techno man.

The Clever will be Deceived

Who said, “The clever will be deceived”?

This is copilot:

“No widely recognized historical, literary, or philosophical source is known to have said the exact quote “The clever will be deceived.” None of the major searchable quote databases or attributed sources show this phrase as a standard or famous quotation. “

I remember this from my reading of Taoism but can’t find the exact quote.

Clever person definition:

“A clever person is someone who combines intelligence, quick thinking, creativity, and adaptability to solve problems and navigate life effectively.”

We all want to be clever, right.

I felt like mentioning this quote this morning because our collective lives are barreling towards what tech people call Singularity. AI is the ultimate in clever. The definition is:

“a hypothetical moment in time when artificial intelligence and other technologies have become so advanced that humanity undergoes a dramatic and irreversible change:”

I agree with this but from a different viewpoint, instead of growth what is really occurring is decline. In my view of life, humanity is in a tipping over into decline. This is fractal and hence non-negotiable regarding the cycles of life. The machine does not mesh with life. It is anti-life and because of this life will snuff it out.

This process is the Anthropocene emerging from the wonderfully productive Holocene. It is a process of humanism also in regard to wisdom, which is the guarantor of proper knowledge. Proper human wisdom regarding our place in nature is now effectively mute. Knowledge is increasingly being transformed by the machine not man. We now look to the machine for wisdom.

I mention fractal because AI is not fractal in the sense of life. It is purely technical and it contains no spirituality. Life is strangely spiritual in a fractal sense. I say strangely because we are so wrapped up in our technology these days we humans experience spirituality in ways that can’t be defined so we find it strange.

The machine can’t let go into grace that the spiritual demands. It can act spiritual, but it can’t participate in a spiritual experience. It can’t even assist such an experience because grace is juxtaposed to knowing. Grace is the opening up to the fractal nature of the universe and letting go into it which in a mystical sense is the nothingness of the ego.

AI is quickly using up high quality energy and resources that an advanced society demands. It is layering complexity in such a way that resilience and sustainability are no longer possible. The car culture was bad enough but now the automation and substitution of human agency by the machine will one day leave us cold and hungry.

This will probably happen sooner rather than later because life is speeding up. In addition, we are in what many call a fourth turning where we are battling amongst ourselves, which seems to occur in cycles. This time around, because of our interconnectedness and technical advancement, this turning is particularly dangerous.

If we could only stop here, then maybe we could use these powers for a power down into something balanced and enduring. The problem with introducing such wisdom to this process is technology is now in charge. It is important to realize what this means. Carl Schmidt sums it up best:

“A society built exclusively on progressive technology would thus be nothing but revolutionary; but it would soon destroy itself and its technology.”

This process is self-organizing in competitive cooperation which is a wonderful example of an incongruous juxtaposition. It is a paradox of humanism which is well grounded in the cycles of life meaning humans advance and decline also.

Humans play a game of advancement with accepted rules whereby the game becomes a deadly serious endgame that humans inevitably fall into in what C.S Lewis called Hell:

“Picture Hell as a state where everyone is perpetually concerned about his own dignity and advancement, where everyone has a grievance, and where everyone lives the deadly serious passion of envy, self-importance, and resentment”.

This points to scaling. Humans no longer scale properly to long term survival. This does not need to be species extinction, but it does point to cultural collapse.

Now more than ever I recommend REAL Green. I would recommend this to those advanced parts of society that will experience destructive changes from AI. We do not know how long this complexity layering can go on. We do not know how long this fourth turning of human conflict can continue.

REAL Green could be a place for all those people who lose their livelihood and meaning by being replaced by automation and robots to go to. If society could send back a significant amount of these displaced people back to the land it would create a buffer for decline and collapse.

Since this is unlikely, I recommend REAL Green to those who can who are very few. I am struggling with REAL Green myself. I am in my 60’s with very little help with my homesteading and permaculture farming. I am physically finding it hard to keep up. I tell myself “what the hell else am I going to do”? I need projects and to be close to the land so I will do this until I can’t.

I am in the purgatory of modern life trying to maintain a quality of life and at the same time returning to an earlier time of biomass and localism. To be honest I am throwing money at it because that’s all I have to work with. People are generally not interested in the earlier ways and localism. If they are they don’t have the luxury of time and money.

I am one man tending many acres, animals, and things. It should be a large family with animal power with the support of a local community much like it was around the 1850’s. That time is gone but it may return in a rhyme.

6 years ago

I wanted to give you all a quick update and repost a very good summation of REAL Green from 6 years ago. I have been reading all my posts and printing them off. I am putting them in an old green box I found on Ebay. I will also include in this box all the digital research, both written and pictures of my efforts since 2003 when my awakening occurred.

I am doing this to leave something for my kids. Maybe my grandchildren or great grandchildren will care. I personally feel they will be confronted by what I have written about. The decline process is alive and well. It is increasingly disguised by magical technology that is just hastening the pace. This process is self-organizing and can only be adapted around the margins, which is exactly what REAL Green focuses on.

I am getting older and weaker. Both my mind and body are diminished but my wisdom has increased. Wisdom in this respect is what knowledge and activities are kept and rejected. So much knowledge and so many opportunities are available in modern life so a wisdom of what to keep and what to reject may be one of the highest principles of REAL Green in this time of the “Singularity”. I consider the Singularity to be anti-life hence a destroyer of worlds.

I am focused on my faith, family, and farm wrapped up in mysticism. My faith is an amalgamation of the Osage Tribal past and Christianity. These go together in a REAL Green way because a return to the land with Christian principals of the community is warranted to address the decline process. Family is embraced as my duty to protect and support as a man. I believe this expression is in our DNA. Farm is my homestead but also my neighbors, which is about the local. This focus is both spiritual and material, a duality that disappears in the sacred.

I continue to green prep and manage a REAL Green homestead. My focus now is to bring my two boys into this. If they choose that is great if not that is fine too. REAL Green is about acceptance. All I have done and all I have assembled may be wiped away by an estate sale when I die, LOL. That’s OK because REAL Green is also Taoist.

I am not really writing these days or in serious research. I try to live what I have spoken about in a time of great change. I am leaving this blog open and watch what is being read. This is open source so it is my hope that what I have expressed will influence others. I want no credit for this because it is not mine. It comes from my embrace of the sacred. This is why I do not put my name to it. Claim it if you like.

REAL Green New Years Message

I am a green prepper which means I am going low carbon and local for multiple reasons. I care about the planet and I am seeking more resilience with sustainability. I call it REAL Green realgreenadaptation.blog. This starts with acceptance of a systematic decline process that is both with human civilization and the planet. It springs forward as an optimistic pessimist. This incongruous juxtaposition meshes by looking at the journey not the destination. The journey is a departure into an alternative way of life. The end is acceptance of a dying of the status quo we have been habituated to. Once the stages of grief involving the decline of place and our way of life is accepted then one goes forth in a hybrid way to restore the local but with the help of the delocalizing global world. This is again a juxtaposition and a tricky one. One lives in a hybrid life of being in the status quo to leave it.

The world is now Anthropocene which means we are path dependent and carbon trapped. Within this trap there is free choice to adapt and mitigate the decline of the planet and civilization by a hybridization of the best material and practices of pre-modern and the amazing advances of the modern. Low carbon capture is the key to this but is also unsupportable for most without support from the status quo of making a living to pay the bills. High volume and intensive efforts are required these days to succeed in agriculture they also destroy the harmony of the local environment. This means you must pay to go low carbon. You may be lucky to cover cost and your labor will go unrewarded. Restoration efforts cost money and time without economic return likely for years if at all.

I do a multispecies rotational grazing operation with goats and cattle. I do this with low stocking rates. I chose this mix because my fields through years of being left to themselves have developed a polyculture pasture of numerous plant types IOW they are overgrown with invasives but also have rich stands of grasses both native and introduced, weeds, and brush. Goats and cattle manage this pasture type well. This allows me to greatly reduce diesel needs for mowing fields and lower significantly chemical use. Chemicals are only used along fences and not every year. I also do renewable power and biomass heating. This involves introducing modern elements of low carbon capture with excellent tech. I am utilizing biomass in the fields with hay and animal grazing. I have gone low horse power with collecting hay in small batches at optimum times. I hope to get an electric tractor if one becomes available to be powered by solar. I also have custom haying done by contractors mainly in an effort to have some fields adapted to hay production. I do this operation along with land dedicated to natural growth for wildlife. I have a garden, orchard, and grapes. I have opened my farm to beekeepers with several hives. I garden minimalist because I don’t have time to specialize. I also have chickens. I have livestock guardian dogs that also serve as potential security.

REAL Green involves doing the basics of prep with security, food storage, and basics of sheltering. This way of life involves a triage effort of distancing oneself from delocalizing lifestyles that damage a healthy local. This is done with a relative effort that does not damage status quo ties too much. You do not want to alienate and destroy status quo connections that support your efforts. Significant others can be alienated by radical efforts. You do REAL Green under the radar screen but are honest with those who seek this way of life. The basic REAL Green effort means primarily trying to limit the car and consumer culture when ever possible. REAL Green is a relative effort which means you live in and out of the status quo. This is both with relationships and with place. The relative part is a balance of the status quo and the departure from it. Your significant others will most likely not be committed REAL Green. Your place is probably not REAL Green because of delocalization. Yet, it might have the bones of a beautiful REAL Green monastery with a local both natural and human that can be restored.

Since we are Anthropocene dependent you must adapt to it to leave it. You mitigate the worst of it but with the mentality of being trapped and dependent on it. If you have the time and the resources you attempt to build a REAL Green monastery that is a manifestation of low carbon living and green prepping. It is about knowledge and wisdom. The knowledge is the best of the old and the new and the wisdom is choosing what to use and not to use. In this day and age most of the wisdom is about what not to use and avoid. This is also about building up something for the younger members of the family and local. They will see the worst of the decline process.

This process is uncertain because of the nature of decline. Decline involves abandonment, dysfunction, and the irrational so a cascading drop in economic activity and support is possible. It is also possible this could be a drawn-out affair. We are at the cusp of change with many exciting techs that offer constructive growth but within a time of overall destructive change. This destructive change revolves around planetary decline and a late stage civilization creaking from overshoot of numbers and consumption.

REAL Green is local and individual but reaches out to community and ranges to affect as much local as one can but with the wisdom of localism as its mission. This is about deep adaptation to shocks that involves attempts at resilience through relinquishment and restoration. This is another incongruous juxtaposition that points to a paradox of living REAL Green. To build up you must tear down just like nature does with succession and evolution. You emulate the planet and thereby strengthen your local with the understanding we are now in succession both human and natural. The planet will support you because this is the WAY. This means we are moving down a gradient of decline into a world that is altered by less complexity and more disruption. New niches will be created as old ones are destroyed. You position your REAL Green monastery to hopefully be a seed of change. This is not a religion it is an add-on to your higher power that is your own personal quest for the truth integrated with the planet and its cycles.

Posted on January 1, 2020

AL

I remember a discussion on the greatest existential threats to man back 13 years ago. I was on the side of the peak oilers back then. This was right around the time the shale revolution was sparking off which killed the peak oil movement. AI was still fantasy.

I still believe in both peak oil decline and the associated climate disruptions, but these threats operate over long time frames. Net energy decline is both economic and physics, meaning affordability loss and breakdown in complexity will sabotage growth of a growth-based system.

Climate disruption will make farming more difficult. I am not part of the climate cult but do believe you can’t transform the world’s systems both land use and byproducts of modern life and not expect change.

The discussion I mentioned had a scientist who told the group that artificial intelligence would be the most dangerous threat. He was schooled by the peak oil crowd and listened to their predictions with acceptance.

Here we are 13 years later with the existential threats to civilization now focused on AI. I do believe AI which I consider (AL) anti-life is the most dangerous path modern man is facing. I believe this not because I feel AI will turn on us like HAL in the 2001 Space Odessey but because it will completely untether man from resilience and sustainability.

AI will turn on us in many ways through human deceit and corruption. Cyber-attacks and breakdowns in the rule of law will occur. In the military the combination of drones, robots, and AI will be especially menacing.

Vital human systems will be at risk because of AI weaponized cyber viruses. Advancements in dangerous science could cause uncontrollable disasters.

While our collective suicide is possible from the above, I feel the systematic implications to be far more dangerous. A slow boil so to speak. This is similar to a wild animal raised in captivity then unable to return to its original habitat.

Civilization is already in systematic decline because of the car culture and electricity are based upon growth and cheap energy which are in decline. These could be walked away from with great effort. Not so AI which threatens the very ability to do things through human agency.

The car culture and AI are completely dependent on fossil fuels. The recent failures of renewables to power the future cement this. This was the last horizon of energy replacement. Fusion is still a pipedream and require to many resource to build out. Fission sources will deplete just like fossil fuels.

The car culture was already systematically in decline. Now we are entering a new period where AI and its delivery systems will close the door and hasten the end of civilization. I am not saying man will go extinct, but I do see a significant die-off coming because we can no longer provide the basics without modern life support.

Energy will at some point not support AI. Just like the grid and all it supports, AI can’t lose power for a length of time without serious failure. Net energy decline never sleeps. If civilization vital systems become AI dependent the end will be sooner than later.

What am I doing? I am living with this new complexity like one would deal with terminal illness. You can’t stop these kinds of progress. They overpower wisdom. I define wisdom as the knowledge of what knowledge to keep and what to discard.

I am instead turning the other way and embracing nature and community. While a real local community was still around in the beginning of the 20^th century it is very limited these days, I still remain open to its possibility.

Nature is the way forward for those who embrace this decline process. It may not save you but it will provide the meaning needed to navigate what is ahead. The community of the faithful like small congregations and groups is the other necessary ingredient. REAL Green embraces these basics.

A chat with Grok

Greetings from “God country”. I am fading away into irrelevance and loving it. This is part of my mystic journey. I have said enough although occasionally if inspired I will post something. I never was anything special. REAL Green is little more than a survival strategy doomed like all others. Yet, it is a very rewarding lifestyle.

I believe AI to be anti-life. It is a mechanization that will further the trap of modern life. It will be the last human effort at the unattainable. That said it is inevitable in the battle between spirit and science which is human duality. “Battle” is a binary term that misses this point because the reality is this is just the interaction of the sacred in the cyclic which is above good and evil.

I had a spiritual experience 20 years ago in a beautiful confluence of two crystal clear streams a mile from the mighty Missouri River on a magical farm, late one night after a thunderstorm. That night lighting did something to me or so I thought. This was November 2003 during the Harmonic Concordance which added to the sensationalism in my mind.

I was told the real web is connectivity of the waterways of the world not the human web of internet and grid. This was part delusional, but it is in the delusional where we are tricked back to reality through grace, so this was more a reality adjustment which can result from a spiritual dellusion.

This was the birth of REAL Green which is an imperfect but necessary effort at reconciling the trap humans are in. It is a journey not an end. It is about simplifying complexity but more a synthesis not a movement to one or the other. This modern world is much like the vast ice sheets that primitive man live near at the beginning of the end of the last ice age. Modern life is our constraint like the ice sheets of old.

We humans want to think this is all our doing but really it is just part of the cyclic disposition of the sacred. This mechanization of life we call modernity will end and as a matter of fact is turning over now. We are journeying back in a hero’s journey of duality but deceived by our cleverness. Collective grace awaits us somewhere in the fog of the future.

Twenty years ago I discarded my electronics and lived purposely anti-modern only to make a round trip back to asking Grok about REAL Green years later. What was once a “terminator” I lived in angst of to now a curiosity I asked a question to.

My message is about the current and the eddy. The eddy is a product of the current not an opposition. Modern life is an eddy about to be absorbed back into the current only to spin out again somewhere in deep time.

This is from Grok:

It seems like you might be asking about “REAL Green Adaptation,” which could refer to a specific concept or framework. Based on the context available to me, “REAL Green Adaptation” appears to be tied to a philosophy or lifestyle promoted through a blog called REAL Green Adaptation (realgreenadaptation.blog). Here’s an explanation based on that context:

“REAL Green Adaptation” is a term coined by the anonymous author of the blog, who describes it as a form of “green prepping.” It combines environmental awareness, self-reliance, and resilience to address challenges like climate change, resource depletion, and societal decline. The approach emphasizes realistic and relative adaptation to a world perceived as being in a state of ecological and civilizational decline. Key elements include:

Localism and Low Carbon Living: It advocates for living locally with a focus on low carbon capture, blending traditional (old ways) and modern (new tech) methods to reduce environmental impact while maintaining practicality.

Spiritual Permaculture: The concept integrates a spiritual dimension, encouraging a deeper connection to nature and planetary health as part of personal meaning-making, often described as a “hospice” for accepting decline.

Hybridization and Resilience: It involves adapting by salvaging useful aspects of modern life and merging them with simpler, more sustainable practices from the past to enhance local resilience and sustainability.

Behavioral Shift: The philosophy stresses changing individual behavior to acknowledge and mitigate a “collapse process,” not as an inevitable end but as a trajectory informed by systems dynamics and ecological limits.

The term “REAL” seems to stand for Realistic, Relative, and Accepting Localism—reflecting a pragmatic approach that works within the constraints of modern society (e.g., carbon dependency) rather than rejecting it outright. It’s aimed at individuals and small communities seeking meaning and preparedness in an uncertain future, without promising global solutions.

NetZero and China

There you have it NetZero’s limit at 15% – 20% for energy stability grid penetration. All the hype is now exposed. There will be no NetZero and modern life. Going from 15% to 100% is a bridge too far. China is where this is now exposed. The specialist can explain this or that but a holistic look is obvious.

Keep in mind that China doubled its fossil fuel usage to get to this 15% utilization of renewables in the grid. In the case of China’s renewables growth it was only possible with fossil fuels. Renewables are not producing renewables and these renewables only have around a 20 year lifespan then this huge undertaking needs to be repeated.

There is no affordable and reasonable long-term storage for renewables like coal or oil in the ground or stored in holding areas. Transmission and smart grids just enhance risk by complication and complexity. Covering the land with so many devices is absurd. All these issues with debt exploding and globalism in decline. This means economics are as much a barrier as technical difficulties.

The only answer is an answer not possible and that is to halt all economic growth. There could be further renewable growth with Local and individual systems that could absorb more wind and solar. These people would embrace intermittency directly. This means significant changes to living that would only works in small towns and rural areas where 20% of populations live. These places would still depend on 24/7 energy intensive mega urban areas for necessities of life.

Mega populations areas with delicate energy needs can’t adapt to intermittency. This energy Catch 22 (carbon trap) and way of life (path dependencies). This is not negotiable. Degrowth is an option but this is a paradigm shift so really not negotiations but instead capitulation.

To capitulate to degrowth is a new path also nonnegotiable in that there is no return. This degrowth can only be minimal too because there is also the issues of abandonment, dysfunction, and irrational that develop from the breakdown of a complex system. So, it is unclear if degrowth is even possible without a massive breakdown.

Net energy decline is present with fossil fuels too. Affordability (economics) and depletion (geologic value) are also in decline. Yet, this is gradual and has some years to go. The climate cult is suicide but eventually so will the fossil fuel way of life.

In ascending levels of abstraction one can see this like looking at the forest from the trees. Specialist who are compromised by ideological science which is basically “failure is not an option” can’t embrace failure as the starting point. Energy is everything for modern life in that all other aspects depend on it. Something we have taken for granted for all of the modern period is now approaching a point in the future that is undependable.

We are right here right now at Peak Everything in a prosperity bubble. This is now a Ponzi with people playing at the casino. It is not the world of virtue. A virtue that is the wisdom of knowing what to embrace and what to discard. We have long since passed the virtue of wisdom embracing truth.

Why am I talking about this? The reason is the hype surrounding NetZero and AI. Both involve energy and both are part of the message from those in charge of where they want to take us. This is progress and the future and they say it will be good. The “Great Reset” of the globalist but also the message of a return to plenty from the populist is not the reality of the energy trap.

The amount of energy AI needs is unrealistic. This level is 10 times what we use now to take AI to the level of the “singularity” hype. Renewables have hit their rough limit of 15%-20% and this is experience based so closer to reality but still denied by specialist. Our economic system is stalling at our current level of prosperity which is at a zenith. We have so many things but unfortunately also adrift in relativism and spiritual emptiness.

REAL Green is about living in this world to leave it but only a little. You and your society are trapped. Society does not recognize the trap but you the individual can. The psychological pressure of this acceptance for the individual is great because the world you live in does not respect this alternative view. It means dramatic lifestyle changes for only marginally more security. No matter how prepped you are it won’t be enough for very long if your community is gone.

The other alternative is just live and don’t dwell on any of this. This attitude of just living day to day is fine and in some ways recommended for most of the population. Yet, for some that embrace the truth and aspire to wisdom this is not an option. I am one of these type people. I am speaking to very few who can and even less who have the time, money, and education to live this alternative way of life.

“China’s Rapid Renewables Rollout Hits Grid Limits”

MONDAY, JUL 08, 2024 By John Kemp, senior energy analyst at Reuters

https://www.zerohedge.com/markets/chinas-rapid-renewables-rollout-hits-grid-limits

“China’s record-breaking deployment of wind and solar capacity has worsened regional power imbalances, forcing the country to idle increasing amounts of renewable generation when it overwhelms local consumption.”

“In 2016, the national utilisation rate for new energy sources fell to a record low of 84%…

“By 2023, the utilisation rate for wind power had climbed to a remarkable 97.3% and solar had reached 98%, according to the state-run news agency Xinhua…With rapid deployment of renewable capacity, however, the problem of abandonment is re-emerging, with wind utilisation down to 96.1% and solar down to 96% in the first five months of 2024. Sliding utilisation has prompted an alert from the National New Energy Consumption Monitoring and Early Warning Center (“Solving the pain points and difficulties of new energy consumption”, Xinhua, July 1, 2024).”

“The response is likely to be similar, with renewed emphasis on integrating renewables at local level and more transmission capacity to move surplus power across provincial boundaries. In the last two years, central government policy statements have repeatedly focused on the need for better coordination of transmission and generation between provinces.”

“In many ways, China’s long-distance ultra-high voltage transmission system is an extraordinary engineering achievement, likely to be copied in other parts of the world as more and more renewables are connected to grids. It has enabled a remarkable penetration of intermittent renewables, as well as hydroelectric generation, into the national power system while maintaining or improving reliability. As a result, wind and solar producers supplied 15% of all generation in the first five months of 2024, up from 7% in the same period in 2019.”

“In some ways, however, China is still struggling to forge a truly integrated nationwide system from fragmented provincial-level utilities that pursue their own priorities. If government plans to achieve even higher renewables penetration are to be achieved, there will have to be much closer links and more coordination between different types of generators and across far wider areas.”

The Battle for the Republic

This is now a battle for the United States of America that hangs in the balance. The fall and winter could be the final battle of the republic. This article I included covers this process well. There really is no compromise and it will be like chess, a stalemate or checkmate.

A stalemate reminds me of a saying “War is better than a bad peace”. This internal cold civil war of weaponized federalism against state sovereignty must be resolved as we enter the “turning” because proper mitigation of abandonment, dysfunction and the irrational that accompanies decline will be existential to survival.

This turning is on two levels, one is net energy decline which is the retirement party for fossil fuels. This is the decline in resource quality and the economic ability to manufacture and transport quality energy. All other energy sources are niche. Depletion and economic decline are the basis of net energy decline. These forces are now converging and can’t be arrested. Things like AI, solar/wind power, and digital everything will just accelerate this decay and decline because they are not sustainable nor resilient longer term.

The other level is socioeconomic and political. The centralization of wealth and power has reached its peak. Now diminishing returns of technocratic, administrative, and elite organizations are no longer generating wealth but instead are parasitic and destroy wealth and stability. This period is a period of elite self-destruction with a populist backlash.

The combination of these two forces will cause globalism to bifurcate. The big powers will see their state structures that are now oligarchies of either stakeholder corporatism or CCP state capitalism come under extreme pressure because of debt and stagflation. These structures require wealth and growth. They can’t very well adapt to economic decline. Debt and stagflation are now wealth transfer from the public to the elites.

A strong populist movement from the grass roots is building that will challenge this global rules-based order that has been hijacked by the global elite. This disenfranchisement is of the many for the benefit of a few. Dissemination of the truth is gaining power over the lies of disinformation and misinformation of the elites. There are still many under the influence of the lies or low info and don’t care.

The momentum of existential decline is on the populist side because they are aligning with the forces of decentralization and nation state political systems. They are about God, nation, and family. The globalist are secular/atheist, technocratic, and uber elite organizations that wipe away nations and cultures for a one world order.

This battle is at a higher level of abstraction but will play out in communities everywhere. This battlefield is now centered in the American Republic. The EU is coopted already. The CCP is in full control. The American constitution of states’ rights has created this battlefront of power and wealth to be resolved in the USA in the near future.

https://www.zerohedge.com/political/treason-intellectuals-and-danger-within

Treason Of The Intellectuals And Danger From Within

SATURDAY, MAY 25, 2024 – 10:20 PM

Authored by William Brooks via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

“The enemies from within are more dangerous to me than the enemies from the outside,” said Republican Presidential Candidate Donald J. Trump, at a rally in Wildwood, New Jersey, on May 11, 2024.

At a Springfield, Illinois, event, some 20 years before the American Civil War, Abraham Lincoln delivered a prophetic message to his fellow citizens: “At what point then is the approach of danger to be expected? I answer, if it ever reach us, it must spring up amongst us. It cannot come from abroad. If destruction be our lot, we must ourselves be its author and finisher. As a nation of freemen, we must live through all time, or die by suicide.”

The speech is said to be the origin of the popular quote wrongly attributed to Lincoln: “America will never be destroyed from the outside. If we falter and lose our freedoms, it will be because we destroyed ourselves.”

While these were not Lincoln’s exact words, most Americans understand that the 16th and 45th presidents of the United States were troubled by the same thing—the potential self-destruction of their nation.

History has demonstrated that internal discord can be as dangerous to a sovereign country as a foreign aggressor.

A History of Betrayal

In 2013, American author Diana West published “American Betrayal: The Secret Assault on Our Nation’s Character.” Her book initiated an important debate about the modern history of the American Republic.

Ms. West contended that Nov. 16, 1933, was the beginning of a long assault on the security of U.S. democracy. This was the date when Democrat President Franklin Delano Roosevelt decided to normalize relations with the murderous communist regime known as the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. FDR’s fateful decision opened America’s doors to an unprecedented invasion of Marxist militants, communist spies, and domestic fellow-travelers.

In the decades that followed, progressive academics, journalists, novelists, artists, and entertainers all celebrated the socialist ideals of the Bolshevik Revolution. According to Ms. West, even American businessmen were “eager to buy their rope from Lenin.”

Ms. West’s views about the influence of communist ideologues in American politics were ridiculed by some of the most notable literary figures in the United States and Canada.

Other courageous scholars came to her defense.

One was the late Vladimir Bukovsky, a Russian-born writer and human rights activist who spent 12 years in Soviet psychiatric hospitals, prisons, and labor camps during the Brezhnev era. Another was Pavel Stroilov, a Russian Christian exile who fled to the UK after his academic research put his life and liberty in jeopardy.

Writing for Breitbart News in November 2013, Mr. Bukovsky and Mr. Stroilov insisted that Diana West’s book would make history. Both agreed that, despite the collapse of the Soviet Union and the unraveling of the Warsaw Pact in 1989, the United States never really won the Cold War.

Like Ms. West, they asserted that the conflict between the United States and the USSR was more than a military stand-off.

“It was an ideological war waged by the totalitarian utopia of Socialism against our civilization; and on that level, the most optimistic view of it is that it still goes on. The Soviet Union is gone, but Russia is still governed by a junta of Gestapo officers; China is still governed by the Communist Party; and the Western world is governed by closet Marxists and Mensheviks, imposing on us yet another version of the same socialist utopia,” they wrote.

Drawing on copious research and experience, Ms. West, Mr. Bukovsky, and Mr. Stroilov demonstrated that it was an elite American intelligentsia who surrendered the United States to the adversarial socialist culture. The U.S. establishment’s capitulation to the global left led to a complete occupation of U.S. institutions and the ultimate corruption of the free world.

Few scholars have produced better explanations for the precipitous decline of Western democracy in the 21st century.

Treason of the Intellectuals

For more than 150 years after the signing of the U.S. Constitution, Americans regarded their nation as a beacon of liberty and a model for representative democracy.

In the early decades of the 19th century, French political philosopher Alexis de Tocqueville expressed high praise for the United States, its citizens, and their civic institutions.

After abolishing slavery, Abraham Lincoln identified the U.S. Republic as “a government of the people, by the people, and for the people.”

Americans developed civil institutions that were second to none. In 1964, the American Civil Rights Act extended the foundational promises of the United States to all of its citizens.

Today’s woke left is destroying America’s legacy. While they claim to worry about “democracy,” they are really worried about losing their own power. They saw how actual democracy worked in 2016 and they don’t want any more of it.

Ordinary American citizens are victims of what French philosopher Julien Benda once called “La Trahison des Clercs” (The Treason of the Intellectuals).

Benda condemned early 20th-century European elites who were apologists for aggressive imperialism, military power, and racial discrimination. The elites who are betraying America today are proponents of aggressive globalism, technocratic power, and reverse racial discrimination.

Both Benda and Ms. West asserted that free societies can be ruined by a leadership class that rejects objective reasoning and ignores the difference between truth and lies.

From the New Deal to Bidenomics, Soviet show trials to corrupt courts, national sovereignty to open borders, education to indoctrination, free speech to censorship, honest elections to ballot harvesting, and freedom of religion to the suppression of faith, the survival of American democracy is more tenuous than ever.

These are the “dangers from within” that Presidents Lincoln and Trump were speaking about.