Guest Post: Preparing For a Transition navy

The Transition will cause great problems and difficulties for the Australian Navy however; these difficulties can be mitigated somewhat by preparation. This preparation would have to be in many ways psychological as well as physical. This preparation would also likely, due to current circumstances, have to take part at least partly during the early stages of the collapse. Such preparations could only happen if Australia begins feeling the affects of the collapse after most other nations begin to be affected

                

A very important preparation would be accepting the fact that their will be very harsh limits on how many ships can be fielded and how much wealth can be spent on the navy and hence what it can accomplish. Failure to acknowledge these limits could cause massive strategic missteps. Today such missteps, such as this British one on Afghan Infrastructure, do not generally cause major damage or problems. However, in a world of very limited and declining resources such as Transition, any misstep has the potential to cause massive and irrevocable damage. The damage could range from massive loss of economic activity due to the withdrawal of wealth to maintain too large a fleet, to having most of our fleet unable to function due to a lack of maintenance.

Coupled with the accepting of limits is the discussion of what the navy will attempt to accomplish out of all that it could try to accomplish. This means that the navy’s goals must be clearly laid out, as well as having sustained discourse on the possible ways to achieve these goals and which ones are more important than the others are. Needed as well is the ability not to attempt things when we are already at the limits of our capabilities.

Another form of preparation would be working out the fundamentals of Transition in military terms of capabilities and complexity, discussed in the ADF journal article Lasers or Longbows? A Paradox of Military Technology. This means keeping as high a level of capability as possible while simultaneously reducing complexity. For the Navy this will be even more important and difficult, due to the inherently high complexity of warships, than for other branches. This could be done through small-scale experimentation of simplifying warship equipment before resources get scarce, allowing for more avenues of research to be explored. And if some successful methods are found soon enough, changing the existing equipment on current warships before the Transition begins.

            Tying in with this would be figuring out how to retrofit beforehand, what ships would be suitable for retrofitting, what roles they could fulfill, and what problems will be encountered when attempting to do so.

Other forms of preparation would also be maintaining both a general industrial base as well as specific industries, despite globalization and cheap labor in China and loss of energy. This along with becoming more self sufficient in military hardware would help reduce complexity (through reduction in supply line length) as well as reduce vulnerability to foreign instability. These could all be done through government policy and of defense force procurement strategies focused on local production. The basic industrial capacity would primarily be based on maintaining metalworking, especially steel, and at least a small level of electronics or computing (possibly mechanical, like the original battleships). The specific industries would be shipbuilding, limited levels of chemical production and high precision engineering. The location of these industries in Australia would also increase our ability to retool said industries for the Transition; more quickly refit/retrofit our ships. This would also prevent our navy being held hostage to other nation’s circumstances such as a civil war destroying their ability to export to us vital equipment or from seizing our equipment in their docks.

Connecting deeply with the local region now, before the collapse starts affecting our relations, on as many levels as possible is a vital step, one that is already being taken due to the belief in the ‘Asian century’ as well as our increasing economic ties to the region. This would focus particularly on our neighboring island nations such as Indonesia, New Caledonia, and New Zealand (already very close). This could involve anything from sending more students to these countries, increasing our diplomatic efforts to those countries, and creating military ties and treaties with those nations. These ties would be critical as those island nations in geographical terms form a shield protecting our valuable east coast and to a lesser extent the north coast. These islands would only serve to defend Australia if they were not hostile to us, if they were hostile, an invasion from an imperial power becomes possible, or even from the island nations. Other important reasons include their closeness to us and the potential for important and prosperous trade between us. These ties will become strained once the Transition begins but if they are, close enough they can remain unbroken and allow us to cooperate with them both during and after the Transition.

Much of the preparation that can be done for Transition includes psychologically preparing for the realities of Transition on a national scale, this however will have limited effectiveness unless it also includes a sustained discussion on how to respond as well as concrete physical steps to prepare for the Transition. Problems for preparing for Post-collapse stem from the closeness of the beginning of the collapse, or even that it has already begun by certain measures limiting the amount of preparation time available and the resources accessible to do so.

Will the Asian century matter?

With the economic rise of China, India and smaller southeastern Asian countries (such as the 4 Asian tigers), the 21st century is expected by many to be the Asian century. However, with Overshoot about to bite down and forced relocalisation to begin, will this actually matter for Australia? As international trade/transport declines, what will it matter if Asia’s economy (or only parts) is booming? As local industries that are integrated into local markets that have re-emerged and imports/exports decline in importance, what does it matter if some other economy is growing? As the decentralising effects of renewables changes the structure of our economy, how will the centralisation model of superpowers work?

While I doubt that the Asian century will happen as predicted due to Overshoot, lets imagine it does. So let us see what some of the possible factors to the answer for the question above are.

As international transport capacity falls, it will not matter how much Asia produces since a bottleneck has been formed (without even taking into account lack of resource shipments to Asia).  Now international transport capacity is not functionally limited and the limiting factors are in other sectors of the economy. But peak oil will change that by lowering utility (via slower speeds, less ships and more expensive transport) of the current system and hampering the ability of creating a new one. The direct adaptation is relocalisation. For Australia and New Zealand, this effect will be even more pronounced due to our isolation. Asia will become more relatively important since they are closer, while their absolute importance declines, so at the beginning it could matter but as transport continues to decline it will eventually decline with it.

Relocalisation will directly challenge globalisation, which the Asian century is based upon by removing mass imports/exports. This will involve the direct revival of local manufacturing in Australia to use our abundant local resources and to fulfil local needs. Thanks to peak oil, the rise of rise of renewably powered industry is assured and the shift in structure it brings. These industries are, however, limited when compared to modern industries and won’t have the productive power of the industries in Asia, luckily that won’t matter as much since they aren’t exporting industries.

Renewable energy is, relative to non-renewables, inherently decentralised and drives industry to be located over a large area instead of being concentrated in small areas. The reason for this is quite simple, renewable energy is available over large areas, and is acutely vulnerable to concentration losses. While non-renewables come in a concentrated form and, barring uranium, easy to transport. Since our economy will downscale anyway, having many small manufactories instead of one or two big factories would work fine. This reduces reliance on Asia for manufactured goods. While the imports remain they will be increasingly restricted to either capital goods and the rich until everything of importance is made locally.

So does the Asian century matter to us?

Guest post: generalised naval strategies for a transition Navy

This is the second in my twin’s naval posts (once a fortnight)

For the Transition, our main maritime goals will be the protection of nearby trade routes and the securing of our territorial integrity, especially in the North (roughly Townsville to Broome). The challenges to achieving both of these goals will be great, as our ability to meet them will be degraded from the disruptions of the post peak world as well as the increasing difficulty of meeting those goals.

The increased difficulties in achieving these aims come from the increased affects of population pressure and failing economies and states. The main way piracy has been combated in modern times is through economic prosperity and state building. Economic stability and state building works in two ways, increasing the amount of legitimate and safe ways to earn a living and hence making piracy unattractive, it also increasing the ability and motive of the local government to deal with piracy by shutting them out of ports or taxing them heavily as they can now wield the power needed to do so, as well as motive through the taxing of trade through the ports, an activity that is threatened by pirates. With the reversal of economic fortunes, a Somalia like situation could become increasingly likely in numerous locations as governments and economies weaken or even become pirate states. This would mean that the main piracy problems would likely come from or centered on weakened or failed states. The other sources of piracy would be privateers or state backed pirates but they primarily have political causes and solutions.

The problems from population pressures would follow from the decrease in food production worldwide, creating overpopulation problems rapidly. This would threaten our territorial integrity as an invasion could begin to look like an attractive solution (especially for Indonesia with almost 250 million people) primarily of the sparsely populated north. Population pressures could also lead to mass migrations; changing significantly the demographic make ups of parts of Australia, probably only in the North. This threatens our territorial integrity as the North could quite easily become non-Australian and secede from the rest of the country permanently. The ruggedness of the terrain would prevent or slow down any movements south but would also make any reversal of the situation unlikely. This would cause permanent problems, especially if the seceding territory is under the control of Indonesia or some other nation, even if the seceding territory is limited to the coast. It would limit our ability to project force North for Anti-piracy operations through the loss of strategic ports (Darwin) into the Asia-Pacific as well as representing a potential threat to our trade routes into Asia.

The Navy required to combat these challenges would need to be both cheap, numerous and able to operate away from our shores. This would mean small warships (frigates and destroyers). These ships would primarily patrol and sweep trade routes for pirates as well as escort cargo ships in order to reduce and combat piracy. Their task would be crucial in order to stop the threat of piracy spreading as piracy could easily create a positive feedback loop where piracy reduces the economic health of a region (from pirates in said region) leading to an increase or appearance of piracy in that region, causing the problem to get worse and spread geographically. Cruisers would potentially be needed if pirate kingdoms or sultanates form and the turreted cannon returns as the main ship weapon. They would be needed due to the increased firepower and armor needed to destroy the pirate ships and fortifications. They would however be much more expensive than the smaller ships and so few, if any would be built.

The responses to the threat of Invasion and/or mass migration are more complex. The threat of mass migration has multiple possible responses ranging from the heavily isolationist response of turning back or sinking the boats to the multiculturalists’ approach of integrating the migrants into our society. All of these solutions would require ships and could be handled by the ships designed for anti-piracy operations and easily and cheaply supplemented by small patrol ships. Their roles could vary from the sinking of vessels to the detection and escorting of boats to proper ports to prevent illegal/undocumented migrants. The threat of invasion makes any response critical as certain changes in the demographics of the North could make invasion both easier and more attractive. While Australia has complete control over the North the threat of invasion can be countered with a strong naval presence. Mass migration threatens this as an invader could have significant local support, even %10 of the population supporting an invader would be a serious problem. Thus an important way to deal with the threat of an invader would be to deal with mass migration. The ability to fight or deter an invasion would still be important as a successful invasion could easily open the way for mass migration (if none was present before), permanently changing the demographics of the North. To do this would require the ability to keep some form of naval presence in the Timor, Arafura and the Coral seas despite a potentially larger enemy fleet. One way this could be done is through the fortifying of Darwin and small ports and coastal towns along the North such as Weipa and port Douglas, both against naval and land assaults, as well as connecting those places through railroad to the rest of Australia. This would allow us to supply the North, potentially cut or disrupt enemy armies form supply or even stop the invasion outright through deterrence or power. Adding to the ability to disrupt and/or deter an invasion could be through a small force of subs as well as strong/strategic allies such as Papua New Guinea and China.

One major problem in the anti-piracy operations and the strategy for dealing with mass migration is the sheer size of the areas we would be dealing with. This limits the effectiveness of anti-piracy patrols as the pirates could more easily hide as well as attack shipping unhindered. It would also make any migrant boats harder to detect before they land on our shores and disrupting whatever strategies we are using to deal with mass migration. One way to deal with this would be to build a massive amount of ships but this would be expensive and likely unfeasible. One way to get around this would be the use of airplanes for reconnaissance, World War I & II prop planes rather than modern jets due to fuel and cost considerations. These could operate from land bases, dedicated carrier ships or even modified warships. If Carrier’s are used they will be closer to the escort carriers of WWII and Australia’s previous carriers previous carries, with fewer aircraft and smaller size than modern fleet carriers. They would most likely be converted commercial ships which is what many escort carriers were. Another option would be adding limited launch capability to the warships, as was done for the HMAS Australia, this would give the navy limited aerial reconnaissance capabilities at a reduced cost compared to dedicated carriers. All of this would take significant capital to start and maintain, so depending on the intricacies of the transition they may not be feasible.

One of the larger problems with dealing with these threats is that of feedback. As the economic situation worsens, all of the threats will become larger as piracy increases and population problems become worse, causing the situation to become even worse. This would also limit our ability to deal with the problems as it would reduce our ability to support and maintain a significant navy. This could easily spark of a self reinforcing loop ending in disaster unless it can be checked. This means that one of the key strategies to dealing with these problems would be to limit the economic devastation of transition in the countries of the Asia-Pacific; this can not be solely done through a naval response. There would also be sharp limits in our ability to slow the economic devastation and it would take enormous political will to attempt anything sufficient when our economy also starts feeling that devastation.

The difficulty of factoring in climate change

The second part of overshoot, environmental degradation, greatest impact will come from climate change. That is not to say that standard environmental degradation; destruction of farmland, atmospheric pollution, etc, will not be a major problem but compared to climate change these are simple, predictable and linear events, climate change is unpredictable, complex and non-linear. Heres an example of a climates systematic complexity, XKCD cassini. Notice that he said that the level of complexity exhibited by that single valley of Chad is found everywhere.

The practical side of this is simple; I can’t use the regional/local effects of climate change as an assumption, with any accuracy, because the effects are completely unknown, and unknowable, to me at this scale. In the various models I’ve seen, the only consistency I’ve seen is that the south of australia gets wetter while the north gets drier, only one model showed the changing rain patterns (more sporadic and evaporates faster). Some things can be guessed, such as more extreme weather events, more variability and such, but specifics can’t be guessed easily on anything below a continental scale.

This means I haven’t used climate change as an explicit assumption, only a an implicit. So, I assume at the end of the peak oil transition that our climate will share similarities with its current state, being only more extreme and with shifted bioregions. I highly doubt this is what we will face, but it’s the best guess I have. Without more accurate and exact climate models the best way to deal with possible major unforseen changes is through willingness and preparation to adapt.  

Guest Post: The basics of Transition and post-peak and Transition in a naval context and for Australia

This is a guest post by my Twin.

In talking about any strategies and tactics for any military branch (but naval in particular) in the context of the post peak future, two important considerations must be factored in. The goal(s) of that military branch and at what stage beyond post peak one is looking at (These are more important for naval considerations because ships are purpose built and take a large amount of capital to build and maintain). The two stages I will be considering are Transition and the ‘New Dawn’. The Transition will be the time of decay and destruction where the world is getting larger and the available resources are getting, on average, smaller across the world. The ‘New Dawn’ will be the period after the decay stops and (hopefully) reverses to some extent, for the naval context I will also add that it also has the aspect that little to no ‘legacy tech’ is in use by the major conventional powers and the majority of Warships in active use are built post-peak. Goals are needed as they define how important, and therefore how many resources can be diverted, for this military aspect. They also define what is needed from that specific military branch in terms of operational capacity and For a Navy where ships have inbuilt capacity an long lifetimes (commonly decades) this is very important.

What are Australia maritime goals? The most obvious one is to defend the country from invasion and due to the criticality of this task, it is likely to be the first priority. However, there are other considerations, this Stratfor piece is an excellent discussion on this topic http://www.stratfor.com/weekly/australias-strategy?utm_source=twitter&utm_medium=official&utm_campaign=link.

In summation our biggest maritime problem is that, we need to trade through sea-lanes in order to be as prosperous as we have been and that we are relatively secure from invasion. However, we are not strong enough to protect and keep the sea-lanes open, especially against the world’s supreme naval power (first Britain and now the US). This means that our main strategy has been to create ‘dependency’ on us from the naval hegemony so that they will protect the trade lanes we depend on. In a post peak world, this strategy would be unreliable on the long term due to several factors such as the decentralization of Transition as well as the loss of technology gradients making the creation of a global empire much more difficult. The alternative strategy would be to keep the sea lanes open ourselves through a mix of direct naval action (mostly close to our shores) and friendly relations with those who control the other important sea lanes.

The differences in Transition and the ‘New Dawn’ are great in terms of tactics, strategic outlook, and preparation. The Transition phase is likely to be long (several decades to centuries) especially in naval terms; it will also involve shorter trade routes (modern long-range shipping will have severe problems) as well as the rapid changing of trade routes during the initial stages. The ‘New Dawn’ on the other hand will have longer trade routes and be defined by whatever technologies are viable and around. This leads to different responses to the two phases, Transition due to the shorter trade routes would favor more direct action along the lines of anti-piracy operations and naval dominance in the local region sufficient to stop the local island nations from blocking said routes. The ‘New Dawn’ on the other hand would rely more on diplomatic efforts to secure the longer trade routes in a similar way as today. Other aspects such as technology and available capital would also differentiate the two phases in radical ways. This aspect of different levels of access to capital is perhaps the greatest challenge in the Transition phase as during the transition little capital would be available to create new warships and maintain the existing ones, making adaption difficult. This however is solvable by preparation and planning taken before the peak hits during the time left. The ‘New Dawn’ is difficult if not impossible to prepare for due to the devastation that will take place during the peak as well as the unknowns about what technologies and resources will be available during that time.

The Transition phase has several problems due to the unique nature of this phase. These aspects are many but two of the main ones are the transitory nature of Transition with the strategic makeup is one of constant flux ending in the arrival of the ‘New Dawn’ through a slow process. The other is the lack of capital, which would mean that navies would be largely limited in warships to what survives the immediate post peak with only small ships being viable to build in significant numbers, this would also make maintenance and logistical support of the navy difficult. This would mean that high tech and large warships would quickly lose capability, as they couldn’t be maintained as often as needed. This would also cause problems in armaments, as the main ship-to-ship weapon of the modern vessel is the missile, a high tech piece of equipment. This would mean that there would be fewer missiles available, their price would be greater and they would be less effective due to cost cutting, non-replacement and degradation of the ships high tech sensors (important for targeting and control of said missiles). Another major tactical challenge during this time is a unique aspect of modern warship design, their lack of armor. Modern warships commonly have little to no armor and rely on not being hit to survive, through destruction of the enemy before either they fire, or destruction of the missiles fired at them. This has resulted in a British warship (HMS Sheffield) during the Falkland’s island being sunk by an Exocet that did not even detonate, instead punching through the ship damaging it and setting it on fire. For related reasons warship speed is also commonly slower than previous ships. This coupled with the inability to quickly replace losses and reduced capabilities would likely make most navies avoid engagements were they could easily lose irreplaceable ships.

Available technology and its availability will determine aspects of both the Transition and ‘New Dawn’ phases. This could easily create a complex environment with major difference amongst different forces as well as create radically different tactics depending on these variables. An example would be missiles, there may be large accurate missiles capable of sinking even the most heavily armored battleship but only the major powers could have access to them. This would mean that armored warships would be extremely effective against pirates but ineffective against another state’s navy. Or missiles could only be viable from aircraft mounts and with limited payloads leading to airplanes having a major advantage but armored warships able to survive. What technologies will be available during the different stages of the post-peak world is a complex question that I am in no position to make any authoritative statements only general principles to consider

1. the age of the technology, new or old
2. the simplicity of said technology
3. how many separate production and design stages are needed
4. dependency on related technologies
5. and so on

Using this I would say that the predominate ship weapon is likely to become the cannon, likely turreted, as the technology is relatively simple when compared to missiles, it is much older and it depends less on related technologies. This does not mean that I think missiles will not be possible or even viable just that cannons will be preferable in many ways. This however means that I also think that armor will come back to warships as well as battleships due to their advantages in terms of cannons.

Other technologies to consider include large fleet carriers, torpedoes (both short and long range), helicopters, and subs. All have their advantages and disadvantages as well as varying levels of complexity and resource needs.

Next post I will look at generalized strategies for the transition stage.

Agriculture and Industry: Economic foundations

Agriculture, the conversion of sunlight to chemical energy and fibres for human use, and Industry, the manipulation of matter to create artefacts, form the foundation of any economy while also being dependent on one another. Agriculture, even in its most primitive form, cannot function without tools (try digging soil with your bare hands), which are products of industry. However, industry, especially handcraft industry, requires the energy provided by agriculture to both create artefacts and extract the raw materials necessary. Neither of these elements stands apart but rather meshes in an intertwining whole. This follows naturally from humanities evolution from only being tool-wielding hunter-gatherers to farmers who used tools with both agriculture and industry being formed together at the same time.

What are the practical aspects of this analysis? It basically allows us to start technological triage on the basic elements of our tech base in a system based holistic approach. We can define completely internal economic units  e.g. an organic agriculture with horses, charcoal from a logging industry (half agriculture, half industry) and a blacksmith with bog iron is a self-sufficient unit that can be expanded/changed in various ways and join other units. Expanding the smithy to a machine shop, using bicycles, adding recycling technology, electricity and/or basic renewables (other than charcoal and food) are some of the ways the alter this basic unit.

Lets imagine this system, how it functions and how changes and linkages could occur. We’ll use a small village surrounded by farmland and forests, no major settlements are nearby (towns and cities) only other villages connected by roads. For the baseline village the only power sources are food (human), fodder (animal) and wood (charcoal, heating or cooking). Local resources are what can be grown and accessed from iron deposits (bog iron or minable) that a small village could utilise. The baseline tech/skill structure to provide the economy is founded on farming, logging and blacksmithing, each feeds the other in some vital way to produce all of the resources the others need to function. The farmers and loggers require tools from the blacksmith, the blacksmith needs charcoal made from wood and the loggers and blacksmith need food from the farmers (yes, they would grow/hunt their own in this situation but only a supplementary amount). Horses and oxen provide transport both within the village, from the farms and to other villages. This basic structure could last indefinitely (if the iron is recycled) without outside imports, unless some disaster hits. However, it doesn’t fulfil all the needs of the villagers; cloth needs to be spun to make clothes, shelters needs to be erected and medicine created for times of sickness.  So these other tech units (fibre production, then spinning thread, making clothes and the tools necessary for the cloth industry) need to be added. In a peasant village these jobs wouldn’t be done by specialists, the wives would have spun cloth and made clothes, but as specialisation occurs new professions would have sprung up but the basic tech/skill structures are still there.

Now let’s change the basics. Instead of only having access to wood, food and fodder, these peasants use either windmills or waterwheels to provide motive power. For this you need a more advanced smithy and  also carpentry. Therefore, to add the complexity of waterwheels or windmills we have to expand the skills of an already existing component. The same occurs if bicycles are added, along with new materials. What happens if we upgrade the single blacksmith to a small machine shop and foundry? Suddenly the range of tools and machines that can be made (and the quantity) has expanded and if we add electricity more things become possible still (like radio). To accommodate this would require more specialisation in the machinists and more resources, e.g. if the machines run of an electric motor or a heat engine then the energy would have to be provide via either the windmills,  waterwheels, biofuels or wood. Every change affects all the relating techs and alters, even if only slightly, the dynamics of the system.   

Ultimately, which basic forms of agriculture and industry are implemented in a given area will depend on both the local environment of resources, weather/climate plus wildlife and the community of technology in adjacent areas. From these two elements will a human-technology ecosystem form.

Turning into a Global Backwater; A good Thing?

Australia and New Zealand are the most isolated developed countries in the world and we are both far removed (geographically) from most the major global centres of power, such as Europe, America, Russia and China. Of the new global powers forming in the wake of Americas decline, (a resurgent Russia, China, India, possibly Brazil) India is the closest but Indonesia, which is shaping up into a powerful regional player, is directly between us. So on a global level, while peak oil advances, shreds global transport, and communication lines forcing more regional forms, Australia and New Zealand will become greatly isolated and removed from the world stage. This could well be seen as a positive advantage.

Militarily there are obvious changes. There was an AISO report released recently from the cold war about a potential US-Russia war, accordingly we wouldn’t be hit in major way (the most we’d have to do is evacuate Adelaide for a few days and have 2000 deaths, light by nuclear war standards). I expect similar things would happen with any major ‘global’ or even a major regional war; we won’t be targeted for several reasons. The important parts of Australia (going by population levels) are all in the southern coast (focused on the east more than the west), facing away from everyone – this makes attacking more difficult. The land also forms an effective defence – similar to Russia (think Napoleon) – and thanks to Submarines the obvious solution of sea transport can be stopped, sea denial tactics are possible, with submarines, against even a superior navy, which massively limits the enemy’s logistic support. This works the other way as well, limiting our ability to project force against most other states.

Economically we have a major advantage in a deglobalising world. Most of our economy is based around our high levels of natural resources, notably agriculture and minerals. in a world where resources have to be used close to where they’re extracted this type of economy coupled with the world class education, research centres (a large amount of research is done here) and a still competitive (but currently in trouble and losing ground) manufacturing base that’s exploring new technologies , such as 3D printing, will be quite powerful. The main problem (and this applies to New Zealand) is that we rely heavily on our extraction exports for our wealth, not that we don’t also use the extractions (we’re self-sufficient in steel for example), and as global trade takes a hit we will see our wealth (measured in such things as GDP) drop quite drastically and also in the real terms of imported goods (everything from Indonesian sweetshop clothes to high precision German equipment). However, since we posses a large resource base and some local manufacturing (especially in base products e.g. steel, aluminium and local renewable energy companies), a large agricultural surplus and good education this is solvable.

First off, we would have to solve the energy problem, a full review of our energy situation will be another post (significant research needed), so I’ll cover the basics. Almost all of our electricity resources are local, whether its coal from the La Trobe valley (lignite) or Tasmania Hydropower (same for New Zealand) and renewables are increasing their share of the electricity production. This could have the interesting effect of having Tasmania become an Industrial (lots of hydropower) and/or chemical production (the necessary agriculture is there and cheap hydroelectricity for hydrogen and other chemicals) centre while the other states scramble to retrofit /rebuild for the new economic situation, New Zealand is also in a similar position. Our renewables are definitely up to the task but it will take time, luckily we can quickly gain access to the necessary resources.

An interesting area will be agriculture since we export a lot (e.g. 50% of our Milk) and while the sector is taking hits from globalisation, the potential remains. So what to do with all this spare capacity, two things; transition to a compact, organic and sustainable farming and food distribution system (I expect part of this will include more small farms) and generate much more bioenergy (the fusion of these two will be quite interesting) for, in order of importance, supplying rural areas with energy (urban areas have other ways), industry, individuals and finally exports (if energy exporting is still a possibility) or military. Currently there are quite a few projects here for farm made and used bioenergy (e.g. a piggery that makes then used biogas and waste heat), a useful adaptation because it directly makes our food system more resilient. Another area will be the replacement of petrochemicals with agrochemicals (e.g. bioplastic) that no longer have to compete against the now cheaper petrochemicals (yes there are limits and problems, but it can help).

Being a global backwater isn’t that bad for us economically, once adaptation has taken place.

Culture will be an interesting area for Australia. Our main cultural heritage is British (I include Irish and Scottish here), followed by a strong mainland European presence and now an increasing oriental influence from the increasing Asian immigration. But, while it has died out recently to globalisation, there has long been a strong Australian culture focused on the bush (think of Ned Kelly, A.B Banjo Paterson’s Poems or the Boxing Kangaroo) that could well see a revival. To illustrate I’ll use food, this comes in two ways ; Bush tucker or native Australian food, like kangaroo (a very good meat), being used more often instead of traditional ingredients and a unique cooking style that draws on all the cultures that have immigrated to Australia (known as fusion cooking).

As the rest of the world recedes, I expect a strong Australian culture will develop and become highly distinctive from the other major cultures of the world.

Therefore, while there are great challenges ahead, which will bring great pain, for Australia these are surmountable. We occupy a safe, resource rich country and have the ability to use these advantages. Becoming a global backwater is actually not that bad.