Ancestors

Written by Charlie Stross on 2025-01-23 at 10:44

Thought for the week ahead:

The death spasms of a dying empire are ugly and dangerous. Also, they look very far away for a very long time until suddenly they're all around you.

All my plans for the future are now as provisional as they should have been in February 2020 ...

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Written by Graydon on 2025-01-23 at 12:00

@cstross The machinery of empire is fine.

(No one is giving up fossil carbon, agriculture remains totally dependent on fossil carbon. The core mechanism of control is as strong as ever it was.)

What we're seeing is a change of ruling class from people with established political and social ties to factions in the imperial heartland to mammonites exalted by wealth and whose social ties are synthetic/cultic. (The analogy with Constantine's conversion is not distant.)

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Toot

Written by Ontploffing Boer on 2025-01-23 at 16:27

@graydon Why do you say that ag remains totally dependent on fossil carbon?

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Descendants

Written by Graydon on 2025-01-23 at 16:36

@ontploffing Tractors, trucks, and trains run on diesel. (Ships use fossil carbon fuels, but not usually diesel.) Fertilizers are synthesized from fossil carbon inputs.

The customary stylized fact has ten tonnes of fossil carbon per tonne of food.

Trying to feed people without mechanized agriculture is a problem we have to solve because we're going to lose agriculture to an unstable climate. It is certainly not solved today. "Local hand tillage" does not suffice in several ways.

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