Scarcity Industrialism, salvaging, and the future

John Michael Greer (JMG) has been doing a series of excellent weekly posts over on his blog, The Archdruid Report (http://thearchdruidreport.blogspot.com/) on the subject of post-oil living. This particular series has been focusing on the near-term futures, leading into the longer term future, with an emphasis on scarcity in industrialism.

I commend this series to you.

Start with the opening post of the series, titled "How Not to Play the Game"
http://thearchdruidreport.blogspot.com/2011/06/how-not-to-play-game_500.html
(Posted Wednesday, June 29, 2011)

In that post, he lays out his understanding of a four-stage adjustment, which are also described in his most excellent book, The Ecotechnic Future. JMG sees these stages:

1. Abundance Industrialism, which is the era we all grew up in and is rapidly starting to close

2. Scarcity Industrialism, which is the period we are starting to live

3. Salvage Societies, which will appear when the resources are exhausted and we are having to salvage from the remnants of the past

4. Ecotechnic Future, which, for lack of a better name (JMG admits), will be the world finally entered many generations from now, after most all resources are exhausted and we live once again within the limits of the Earth and the Sun.

After you have read the starting post, then ponder this further in the subsequent weekly submissions that attempt to spell these changes out and how possibly to adapt, adjust, and benefit as you help others transition through this process. The next entries in the series include:

Salvaging Energy
http://thearchdruidreport.blogspot.com/2011/07/salvaging-energy.html
(Posted Wednesday, July 6, 2011)

Salvaging Quality
http://thearchdruidreport.blogspot.com/2011/07/salvaging-quality.html
(Posted Wednesday, July 13, 2011)

Salvaging Resilience
http://thearchdruidreport.blogspot.com/2011/07/salvaging-resilience.html
(Posted Wednesday, July 20, 2011)

And no doubt the series will continue, so stay tuned.

And after reading these four posts on the The Archdruid Report, peruse his earlier posts just before that regarding scale, energy, and so on. JMG's blog is well worth reading, as I have said a few times before this.

Cheers from Dubuque.