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June 10 2020 Book review: The Collapse of 2020 - Kirkpatrick Sale - (c) 2020 [0] Gonna blame the drop-off in postings on "summertime lull" which is at least partially true as I've been busy with the usual house maintenance tasks and trying to find places to hike that aren't teaming with stressed out Denver urbanites; regional parks are estimated to be seeing a 40% increase in usage due to fallout from responses to the COVID-19 pandemic. Couple that with what looks a lot like the race riots of the 1960s during an election year featuring a pair of old white digital rapists and you get the makings of a rather atypical Summer. But.. from within the great isles of Home Depot you'd never guess the country is teetering on the edge of a second great depression. The parking lot is nearly always full and people seem to be spending money on home and garden. Perhaps extra storage for all those rolls of toilet paper? - - I've added a couple of new links to this site. The first is a news aggregator called The Automatic Earth [1] which has been around a while and mostly focuses on chronicling the financial aspects of our predicament, though lately there has been quite a bit on the corona virus situation given the huge financial ramifications of addressing it (or not). The other link is the 'newculture' YouTube channel featuring a nice collection of thoughtful interviews/discussions led by Arron Wisser [2] of Local Future, a non-profit based out of Michigan. Apparently Aaron was active in the Peak Oil scene a decade or so ago. Lately he has been doing some marathon sessions with Nicole Foss [3], a long time peak oiler and promoter of more resilient living. Segments of the last couple weeks are definitely worth checking out. - - Review of 'The Collapse of 2020' by Kirkpatrick Sales This is a very thin volume, more pamphlet than book. Fortunately Sales is a seasoned writer and gets his points across in under 50 pages, references included. Given the current headlines one might think this some sort of response but in actuality it's origin dates back to 1995 and a bet Sales made with Keven Kelly, then editor of Wired magazine. Seems Kelly took issue with some statements Sales made regarding the likely dire outcome of an ever-expanding/consuming industrial civilization in his 1995 book 'Rebels against the Future' which tells the story of the infamous Luddites. Kelly, clearly a techno-utopian, requested an interview, afterwards grilling Sales for exactly how and when a civilizational collapse might occur. Sales blurted out 2020 (probably based on the Limits of Growth standard model curves) to which Kelly countered with a $1,000 bet that 2020 would arrive with none of the doom and gloom predicted. Fast forward to late 2019 and already signs of trouble were popping up. Sales chronicles these in subsequent chapters, laying out the evidence of the environmental, political, financial and cultural collapses currently unfolding. And all this _before_ COVID-19 and the protests/riots/crackdowns stemming from the killing of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, and Ahmaud Arbery by current and former police officers. Sales concludes stating that he may have technically lost the bet (civilization hasn't yet collapsed) but not by much. It's unclear whether Kelly has made any claim on the decades old bet, perhaps being preoccupied with more pressing matters. The actual evidence Sales lays out isn't anything new but it is concisely laid out. Sales is a regular contributor at CounterPunch [4], an independent leftist news magazine; his November 8th, 2019 article is basically the intro chapter of this short volume. Sam Mitchel of Collapse Chronicles (YT) also has a related hour-long interview with Sales [5]. - - [0] https://outskirtspress.com/thecollapseof2020 [1] https://www.theautomaticearth.com [2] https://www.youtube.com/user/newculture [3] http://www.foss.blog/ [4] https://www.counterpunch.org/author/kirkpatrick-sale/ [5] https://youtu.be/POvxSS5xyC4