Category Archives: Jobs and Skills

As population declines from 7+ billion to 1 billion or less, what jobs or skills are most likely to help you survive?

Menhaden: the fish at the bottom of the ocean food web

Posted on August 2, 2024 by

Preface. Oil has allowed us to extract 90% of the fish in the ocean by being able to go to the ends of the earth using sonar and spotting planes to find the last schools. Menhaden have been overfished for … Continue reading →

Posted in Biodiversity Loss, Fisheries, Jobs and Skills, Starvation | Tagged , , , , | 6 Comments

Subsistence life in West Virginia before capitalism

Posted on November 15, 2023 by

Preface.  These are a few of my kindle notes from Steven Stoll’s “Ramp Hollow: The Ordeal of Appalachia” that may give you an idea of how people might survive after collapse. It is a damning critique of capitalism.

Posted in Jobs and Skills, Life Before Oil | Tagged , , , | 3 Comments

So you don’t want to be a farmer postcarbon? City jobs of the future

Posted on March 6, 2022 by

Preface. This book summarizes the work of Henry Mayhew from 1849 to 1852. He wrote about the people and goods  being sold on the streets of London, interviewing hundreds of street vendors. He estimated there were about 30,000 of them … Continue reading →

Posted in Jobs and Skills, Life Before Oil | Tagged , , | Comments Off on So you don’t want to be a farmer postcarbon? City jobs of the future

Life After Fossil Fuels: manufacturing will be less precise

Posted on May 5, 2021 by

Preface. This is a book review and excerpts of Winchester’s “The Perfectionists: How Precision Engineers created the modern world”. The book describes how the industrial revolution was made possible with ever more precision.  First came the steam engine, possible to … Continue reading →

Posted in Infrastructure & Collapse, Jobs and Skills, Life After Fossil Fuels, Manufacturing & Industrial Heat | Tagged , , , , , | Comments Off on Life After Fossil Fuels: manufacturing will be less precise

Book Review: The Age of Wood: Our Most Useful Material & the Construction of Civilization

Posted on April 23, 2021 by

Preface. This is a book review, mainly with excerpts, of Ennos’s book “The Age of Wood. Our Most Useful Material and the Construction of Civilization”. If you know anything about woodworking, you will enjoy the detailed descriptions of how and … Continue reading →

Posted in Energy Books, Jobs and Skills, Life After Fossil Fuels, Wood | Tagged , , , , , | 1 Comment

Become a Bison rancher

Posted on September 21, 2014 by

Far more buffalo can be grazed per acre than cattle. It’s likely wild bison will return to the Great Plains in the future.   Already there are fewer people in areas where the Ogalla aquifer has been depleted than when Native … Continue reading →

Posted in Agriculture, Farming and Ranching | Comments Off on Become a Bison rancher

Richard Heinberg We need 50 million farmers

Posted on April 4, 2014 by

Fifty Million Farmers by Richard Heinberg, originally published by Energy Bulletin  | Nov 17, 2006 (Note: This is the abbreviated text of a lecture by Richard Heinberg delivered to the E. F. Schumacher Society in Stockbridge, Massachusetts on October 28, … Continue reading →

Posted in Farming and Ranching | Comments Off on Richard Heinberg We need 50 million farmers

We’ll need more Farmers

Posted on April 4, 2014 by

Energy Descent and Agricultural Population Jason Bradford on March 11, 2009 Some excerpts of this article below: Among the cadre of folks who think about food systems and sustainability in the U.S., there’s a concern about the number of farmers … Continue reading →

Posted in Farming and Ranching | Comments Off on We’ll need more Farmers