JOURNAL: Resilient Communities as an export?

As I point out in Brave New War, resilient communities are a necessary step to survive unexpected global system shocks (vicious black swans that rapidly sweep through our newly interconnected and tightly coupled grid) over the next decades. The reduction in complexity made possible by a bottoms up approach not only ensures local success in the face of system failures, it makes it possible for the entire system to re-establish itself faster and with less long term damage.

When we do eventually develop adopt resilient community model, either with foresight by those who want to gain competitive advantage or through desperation brought on by repeated failure, we will likely find a welcome audience for all its elements in the developing world. Regardless, the faster we do so the better, as Michael Wines demonstrates with his article on how a continent wide power crises is slowing innovation and growth in Africa.

Comments

[Duncan Kinder]

"Regardless, the faster we do so the better, as Michael Wines demonstrates with his article on how a continent wide power crises is slowing innovation and growth in Africa."

John,

While reading your post, I was thinking of throwing this very article at you, until I read this at the end.

What this article suggests is that Africa, through a messy and currently unpleasant process, is evolving into an electric grid-free state. Birth pangs and drug withdrawal suggest themselves as metaphors.

The end result may very well be that Africa shall sing to the West the "We can all do without you" song that Eliza Doolittle sings to Henry Higgins in My Fair Lady.

And it would probably follow that Africa will be the exporter, not the importer, of this grid-free state.

[georgelarson]

It has occurred to me that the large vertically integrated corporations of the early 20th century represent resilient communities. Many generated their own power, housed their workers, provided medical care and controlled their natural resources and upstream factories, shipping lines, railroads and pipelines in addition to their primary businesses. They even had agreements to support other competitors in times of crises Of course the trend in modern management is to subcontract everything out accept for the CEO. I wonder if an organization could raise capitol to do this today as a risk reduction measure?

[adam]

George Larson,

The answer is, to an extent, yes, particularly in expatriate business communities in the Middle East and Africa where an awful lot of medical and electrical generation is supported locally within compounds.

That said my experience with Africa is that the locals are frankly not that well educated and are highly religious and that's at least 50% of the problem in Africa. Case in point, one of our lads in the office has a cousin who had a business selling recharging for mobile phones. He didn't spend $1 on buying a surge protector for his operation because... God will protect him. God, as is normal, didn't.

There is also a certain amount of integration in the US among some of the far-right groups, if we take the idea of a survivalist community being a vertically integrated corporation (presumably one that waits for the end of civilisation). As I noted earlier this is very much to an extent. To be honest the guys that form these communities never struck me as stable enough to handle the current reality, never mind the road warrior future they were waiting for. Quite where they get their money from is more arguable.

For those with a sense of humour the Heritage Foundation provides subsidised and secure living arrangements for its hacks in Washington. In order to do this they raised $12m in capital. Its very socialist of them.

I cheerfully admit that these are extreme examples though, but then most people currently live "on the grid" so current live examples are hard to find right now.

[a517dogg]

Resilience isn't always generated because of system failure, sometimes its generated because there are no systems to fail in the first place.

Here's a resilient chap, building a windmill so he could read at night:
http://www.ethanzuckerman.com/blog/2007/06/20/a-new-wind-blowing-in-africa/

[gmoke]

Jewish World Watch (http://www.jewishworldwatch.org) is exporting a solar oven project to the refugees from Darfur. BogoLight (http://www.bogolight.com) is distributing solar rechargeable LED lights to countries around the world. Add the African-invented pot-in-pot food coolers to the mix and you have a certain measure of resilience already.

[Russell120]

I suspect that many of these electrical systems provide heavily subsidized energy to key constituents (the capitol city) and suffer from large amount of theft. So the systems operate at a huge loss, and thus suffer from under-capitalization within the relatively poor countries of Africa.

In countries with large amounts of oil wealth - Iraq before it invaded Iran for instance - the oil wealth is used to prop up the system. But if revenues get shaky they cut production in the outlining areas, and keep it going in the capitol.

With out a stable legal system that protects the rights of the energy providers it is unlikely that anything other then an haphazardly connected patchwork system will involve. Patchwork systems may be less susceptible to system wide collapses, but at the expense of far more frequent local collapses.

In fairness to the god fearing gentleman noted in the comments above: the type of on-again, off-again, low-voltage, over-voltage that he is likely to get from the grid are probably not going to be helped much by a $1 surge suppressor.

[Duncan Kinder]

For an overview of how high oil prices are generally affecting the Third World, read:

"Peak Oil Hits the Third World: High Oil Prices Bring Energy Shortages"
http://www.energyandcapital.com/articles/peak+oil-renewable+energy-shortages/490

Sample quotes from this article to give you a flavor for its contents:

quote:

Asia and Middle East

Nepal: Gasoline and diesel shortages are crippling the country. In July, the Kathmandu valley was hit with its worst energy crisis in history as the state-owned petroleum importer and distributor stopped supplies to gas stations entirely. Fuming taxi drivers subsequently parked their cars before the heart of the Nepalese government center to protest the shortfall. The Nepal Oil Company (NOC) has been facing cuts from its sole supplier, the Indian Oil Corporation (IOC), because of mounting debts owing to Nepal's subsidies, which force NOC to sell fuel below cost.

Pakistan: Chronic power shortages have led to riots in the streets in Karachi. At one point this summer, the gap between supply and demand reached a peak of 3,000 megawatts (MW). Due to chronic underinvestment in energy infrastructure, the country's Planning Commission estimates that its shortfall in oil supply will grow to 3.2 million tons of oil equivalent (TOE) in 2010, and 21.5 TOE in 2020.

Iraq: Iraq has suffered from an acute shortage of oil products since the U.S.-led invasion in 2003. This week brought a report that Iraq's electricity grid could collapse any day now, due to sabotage, rising demand, fuel shortages, and provincial officials who are disconnecting their local power stations from the national grid (presumably in the interest of self-preservation). Constant attacks on pipelines have made it impossible for Iraq to meet its internal need for gasoline, forcing it to rely on imports to the tune of 1.3 million gallons per day. At the same time, it is being forced to reduce subsidies on gasoline in order to meet IMF debt-reduction requirements, even as it struggles with 60% unemployment and rampant poverty as well as chronic grid blackouts. Oil smuggling and a robust black market have sprung up to take advantage of an estimated 10x spread between the official subsidized prices and black market rates.

Iran: Chronic gasoline shortages have forced the government to impose rationing. Motorists can buy only 100 liters a month at the subsidized price of 1,000 riyals (about 11 cents) a liter (the cheapest gasoline in the world). Iran's program of oil subsidies--combined with sanctions from the West over its nuclear intentions--has proved disastrous, putting the government in an intense budgetary squeeze. Angry protesters torched 19 gas stations in response to the rationing in late June. Tehran currently imports about half of its gasoline, and absorbs a loss of nearly $2 per gallon on it, creating an intense drain on the national coffers. As in Iraq, rationing is expected to lead to a brisk black market.

Bangladesh: The shortage of electricity is acute, to the tune of about 2,000 MW a day, which is resulting in regular blackouts. Bangladesh's attempts to import electricity from India, Nepal and Bhutan have been fruitless, so in June the country obtained permission from the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) to begin building nuclear power plants.

:end_of_quote

Disclaimer: Back in the 1970's, I sat in Kenneth Deffeyes' geology class at Princeton, where he asserted that the energy crunch would then be upon us. There is a finite amount of oil in the ground, so sooner or later such a crunch must indeed happen and - perhaps - it may even be now. Nevertheless, my experience with Deffeyes' suggests that there is at least a 30 year margin of error in his predictions.