List,
I have just completed "World Made by Hand" by Jim Kunstler.
It's a good tale, and possibly a forewarning of how bad things could become - a worse case scenario.
He presents an interesting view of the near future (set in about 2025), where the fabric of modern life has completely collapsed, and those survivors have resorted to running small farmsteads, growing staple crops, rearing goats and chickens and using horses, mules and oxen for transportation and ploughing.
The electricity grid has failed almost completely except for brief surges of power that bring the lights and radios on for mere minutes per month.
Some properties have managed to maintain their own private power supply provided by small hydroelectric generators. No mention of solar pV or Listers
but wind turbines do get a mention.
The infrastructure has fallen into terminal decline, no mail, no telephones and the roads have become so pot-holed that they are almost unusable even to horse drawn carts. Notably was the loss of rubber for pneumatic tyres, and even a 40 mile trip was a 2 day ride.
It has made me contemplate what is the point of generating your own power, when few of the appliances, lightbulbs, consumer electronics etc are likely to work for long after the point of collapse, and replacement CFL bulbs from China are unlikely to be available.
Why should we want to generate 10kWh per day when the dishwasher is broken beyond repair, and electricity has little use apart from providing illumination after the hours of darkness?
The main underlying message, must be, to maintain the means to feed ourselves, heat our homes in winter and keep stuff refrigerated. After that - very little else matters.
Enough of this doom and gloom, I recommend that you read the book and form your own opinions.
Ken
