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Veteran
Posts: 214
| I'm doing this to focus my mind and yours on what these are so I / we don't miss any and so we have perspective on and understanding of how they relate to one another and might progress. This time, for good or ill, seems appropriate for it, now we might have a couple of months of relative peace from significant disruption.
1. Primary risks / drivers
1.1 Population and consumption growth
1.2 Climate change
1.3 Non-renewable resource scarcity
1.4 Economic system unsustainability
1.5 Aquifer depletion
1.6 Topsoil erosion
2. Secondary risks
2.1 Increased extreme weather events
2.2 Increased commodity prices
2.3 Insufficient food production
2.4 Unsustainable and increasingly desparate economic / fiscal policies
2.5 Economic system instability
2.6 Some localised social system instability
3. Tertiary risks
3.1 Globalisation reversal
3.2 Overt or cost based rationing
3.3 Starvation
3.4 Hyperinflation and hyperdeflation (probably in that order)
3.5 Financial system breakdown
3.6 Social system instability
3.7 Conflict, sometimes war of various kinds
3.8 Mortality increase (health system collapse, pandemics, conflict)
3.9 Totalitarian (powerful group) management / facilitation
4. Quaternary risks
4.1 Systemic collapse
4.2 Population collapse
4.3 Nation state etc failure
4.4 Information and knowledge loss
5. Endstate possibilities
... no, another day perhaps
It seems to me we are now well into the secondary risk area but not yet properly started into the tertiary risks. My primary concern is that things could move from here to the quaternary risks surprisingly quickly. Heck, the tertiary risks look scary enough.
I hope the process from now to the worst shortish term low point (be it somewhere in the tertiary or quaternary - for it will surely be in those areas) takes 10 years or more. But I know it doesn't, we will be very lucky to have more than 5 years and it could be well underway within two.
Someday I must give you some info and links on complex adaptive systems - like the one we inhabit - their resilience and failure. They keep working until they don't, the transition tends to be near instantaneous.
I'd like your thoughts on this list, do you want to move or add items? Recategorise? Rethink? Does it seem a useful concept?
This is probably worth considering with my 'levels of collapse' and could be considered as another way of conceptualising the level 2 to 4 collapses:
http://www.transitionblackisle.org/forum/forums/thread-view.asp?tid...
My hope is that, once this structure is knocked into a generally acceptable / accepted shape, we might use it to help devise our practical actions / policies / projects and their timing.
I know some of you will think I'm bonkers, I can't help that beyond wishing it to be true. Others will think I'm prematurely apocalyptic, I hope so too, odds are I am but I may be uncomfortably not so premature that thinking on this is not now urgent and should shape our and TBI's action. | |
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Regular
Posts: 63
| This is a useful heirarchy of risks. I don't think the slide from the top to the bottom of the list is inevitable although I agree we're well into your level 1 and level 2 risks. I guess the Transtion aim is that we do genuinely change course so that we climb out of this sprial of decline into a new paradigm - with policies for dramatically reducing population and consumption. If there is no change, the continued slide seems inevitable.
I think it would be helpful to try to articulate the climb out into this new paradigm as I think you suggest when you say we could use it to devise practical action, policies and projects for TBI. Could you maybe create a framework for this bit too? We could then discuss and work on this as part of our future planning.
Incidentally, I'd be interested to see your links for complex adaptive systems that you mention.
Penny | |
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Veteran
Posts: 214
| My articulation of the climb out, on broad scale, was "Frodo's solution", now looking even more impossible than it did a year ago.
Even within the microcosm of TBI we have the problem of seriously different perceptions of how severe and imminent the societal / human problem might be. I tend to be vocally towards (what many see as) the apocalyptic extreme, others see BAU (Business As Usual) continuing for a good many years yet.
Probably we can't come to some shared vision of what is most probable and its likely timescale of unfolding, I think that is good - uniformity in perception and thinking is generally blinkered and maladaptive.
But I think we might be able to generally agree the major potential risks, look at them from a local Black Isle perspective, see what we could attempt to do (as TBI, as the local community generally), then try to turn that into 'projects' to be done by TBI or others, funded or not.
Perhaps we could come up with a briefing document covering the range from near BAU through to near imminent collapse, plus a set of potential responses, to circulate on the Black Isle to hopefully ellicit comment and involvement?
What we need now, methinks, is a strategy to devise a strategy. That will probably be best initially shaped by a good handful of people greased by sufficient beer or wine. This is my initial framework, LOL.
I will post about CAS soon, I hope (not tonight)
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A brief list of important risks