You don’t know shit

I’m well known for predicting the demise of large modern cities.  Utterly convinced of their massive unsustainability I am…  apart from the vulnerability of their food distribution systems in a collapsing fossil fuelled world, there is the issue of sewerage.  People in cities just flush and forget, but have no idea of what happens afterwards.  Nobody, absolutely nobody, wants to know what happens to their shit!  Don’t get me wrong, I don’t find it the most palatable of subjects myself, but if you’re interested in sustainability, then shit is a major issue.

Then, along comes this film past my intray.  It’s times like these you’re glad they haven’t yet worked out how to make your computer generate smells as well as sounds..!  All the same, it’s a real eye opener.

There is no doubt that sewerage saved London (the first sewered city in the world, if you don’t count Rome a couple of thousand years ago – though it wasn’t sewers as we know them that they used back that far., but sewers did not save us from cities.  Cities MUST have sewers, they are simply too big and there are too many people to deal with.  At one million inhabitants, Rome had it easy compared to those cities today that count their citizens in the tens of millions…..

So, watch this……:

I knew these things were complex, but this blew me away nonetheless, because all I could think about as the film advanced was “what will they do when the oil runs out…?”

It is simply extraordinary how I can achieve the exact same results they do, using just a couple of 4W fans…..

Complexity will kill complex civilisation.  it was built off the back of huge amounts of surplus energy.  For me, the future of civilisation comes down to just those two words: SURPLUS ENERGY.  Nothing else matters.  Here is Susan Krumdieck on ERoEI and nett or surplus energy….