This presents two possibilities--deny reality and try to keep BAU going by transitioning to renewable energy and e-vehicles, and crash because the resources aren't there--or acknowledge reality and plan for a controlled degrowth to minimize suffering. But it seems to me there's a third option, and that may be what elites in power are working toward. Namely, use the story of BAU and a transition to get things set up so that small portion of humanity can continue to live a modern, high-energy lifestyle, while the majority lives like the peasants of the Middle Ages.

I don't think your worst-case scenario is possible (at least not for long). A "modern, high-energy lifestyle", requires nearly all of modern supply chains for support. If the mass of people are living like peasants, the elites can only live like the old lords of the manor and the aristocracy from the Middle Ages, too. Everything really modern requires access to electricity and the modern electric grid can only be sustained in the context of a modern economy, an economy kept going by billions of workers in modern jobs.

Middle Age elites may have lived in stone structures instead of wood or mud, and they may have had more variety in their food, but they still got around on horseback or by carriage and none of them had central heat or air conditioning. While the peasants might have had to worry more about hunger, the elites always had to worry about being killed by each other. After collapse, modern weapons will make elite conflict for turf more bloody, but only while the ammo lasts. The best thing that we peasants can do is stay out of the way. "When elephants fight, it is the grass that suffers".

I disagree about electricity requiring a global supply chain with billions of workers. I would concede that gasoline will not be practical, but that's why they need electric vehicles. They'll probably want to keep helicopters and planes going, too, to facilitate plunder. I also don't think it's the elites fighting each other that we peasants will have to worry about. I worry about the other peasants coming to seize the solar panels, chickens, and garden crops if a collapse happens swiftly (or maybe even if it doesn't), and also about the elite using armored drones an such to eliminate resistance from us peasants to their rapacious and planet-killing actions. AND it's questionable how possible it will be for people to say out of the way--elites have always been able to draft the peasants into fighting their wars. It isn't hard--a little bullshit will induce many a young male fool to sign up and march off.

So I figured this out long ago and bought a farm that is self sufficient and even has draft horses. Farming is a lot of work but the rewards are really worth it. Being too old I am happily forced into feeding the horses, working with them and being self sufficient has given me a great sense of pride. Yes I get stiff sitting so being outdoors and working makes life much better.If only I could get others to share this with.

I visit this site every day and had become used to shaking my head and sighing reading articles that usually began by stating things such as, "if we all just", or, "All we have to do is". There are plenty of ways we could have dealt with all the cascading problems of this civilization. We didn't and now we are going to pay the cost. This article is by far the best one I have read on this site. Thank-you. Finally some reality.

I gather your approval is because Eliza Daley, the author of this article, correctly points out that collapse of our transport-intensive system is inevitable. I agree, yet I still find this type of writing, common on this website, frustrating. Her advice is so vague it is pretty much just to write plans and lists. She is comfortable admitting that she hasn't even got her facts straight about biodiesel and alcohol fuel, both of which lend themselves to small-scale production for very limited uses such as tillage, and therefore are crucial relocalization technologies. Her assumption seems to be that there is no need to lead by example, in the enormous task of learning to produce in dispersed small-scale facilities. This is, as you say, much better than just advising the world at large what it should somehow unite to do. But it is still just advice rather than leadership.

I'll correct you since you are wrong. There are engines that can burn pure ethanol, in fact, Brazil has had and still has E100 since 1979 or so.

Scania sells ED95 ethanol engines worldwide for heavy trucks and buses and has for a long time. In our country, John Deere and Cummins have invested money into a company named ClearFlame who converts existing diesel engines to be able to burn E100. They drove a semi-truck with their engine to Washington DC in March.

European advanced and ultra-quiet submarines use ethanol to power fuel cells. Nissan has an ethanol powered fuel cell for vehicles. They drove a prototype in Brazil in 2016. Ethanol fuel cells are much safer than storing super high-pressure hydrogen. The ethanol can even have enough water so as to be non-flammable and still work in the fuel cell.

Argonne is working closely with Progress Rail, a Caterpillar company, to develop a two fuel system that can be installed in existing locomotives to supply hydrous ethanol to engines.

Ethanol when burnt is basically pollution free which is why they can sell ventless ethanol fireplaces. ClearFlame eliminates the need for DEF and exhaust filters which is a bane to diesel owners.

Iowa State University measured all the energy it takes to produce an acre of corn into a "diesel fuel equivalent"

This included machinery, fertilizer, chemicals, tillage, planting, harvesting, drying, trucking etc.

They found it takes 34 gal of diesel to produce one acre of corn.

What do we get from those 34 gallons of diesel?

We get >500 gallons of ethanol.

But wait, that is not the kicker.

The kicker is we still get 100% of the protein(& other things) from that acre of corn still available for an even better feed. A win, win.

How do they (ClearFlame) ignite the ethanol? Don't they have to have a little bit of oily fuel mixed in to spontaneously ignite from compression? I run straight B100 biodiesel in thirty-year-old indirect injection engines, which saves both net carbon emission and the huge carbon cost of building a new engine. I use waste deepfry grease as the feedstock. Here in Canada, french fries are made with canola, which has a lower gel point than the soy commonly used stateside. But being on the mild West coast, it rarely drops below freezing. So I can burn B100 year-round. Still, I don't think your information or mine contradicts the point of the article. Industrial agriculture is failing anyway; if mass transport has to snatch food from our plates, we will have to learn to produce almost everything we need locally.

The Scania engines (28 to 1 compression) do have 5% ignition improver in the ED95 fuel (95% ethanol). 5% biodiesel would work as well.

I think ClearFlame heats the fuel or something similar to get ignition with the E100. Check out their website.

I have used canola biodiesel. I was not sure of the like of anti-gel to add and the most non-toxic I found was Lucas but did not add enough for dead of winter.

By refining bio-diesel a little further, they are making chemically identical diesel fuel which is called renewable diesel fuel. It is better in wintertime than number 1 diesel.

The ClearFlame is the best route IMHO. There also is an ethanol engine Ricardo built for GM a few years ago which got better mileage and power than gasoline and even diesel engines:

FROM RICARDO:
The new federal CAFE standards are calling for a doubling of fuel mileage performance, which, Vint says, is going to send OEM’s looking for high octane numbers to improve efficiency and ethanol is the best source. Ricardo, an engineering firm with over 100 years in the business of engine design, has developed an extreme boosted direct injection engine (EBDI) to optimize ethanol blends. The 3.2 V6 gasoline engine rivals the power and torque of a much larger GMC Sierra 6.6 diesel, he said, and it delivers 3.5 percent better fuel economy than the diesel.

Almost all manufactures have built efficient ethanol prototype engines. Cummings even had one of their own which had a spark plug.

FROM CUMMINS ETHOS ENGINE:
According to Cummins, it delivers the power (up to 250 hp) and peak torque (up to 450 lb. ft.) of gasoline and diesel engines nearly twice its displacement...
...Using corn derived E-85, the high thermal efficiency and power-to-weight ratio of this engine results in 50 to 58 percent lower well-to-wheels CO2 emissions compared with the gasoline engine baseline. Using second-generation, lingo-cellulosic derived E-85, the power train’s efficiency features deliver 75 to 80 percent lower well-to-wheels CO2 emissions, depending on the drive cycle.

David Blume speaks of one he was consulted on which also gets higher mileage than diesel but uses a plasma ignition system. He did not state who in the video I watched, but I think it is one MIT is working on from the searches I could find.

This is not new technology or knowledge, it was known long ago. It is suppressed technology.

Rear Admiral C.M. Chester wrote Henry Ford a letter on Dec.15, 1916:
"...I also pointed out in the article that as governmental laboratories had developed from 40 to 55% efficiency in alcohol engines as against 20% in gasoline machines, the use of alcohol at double the cost of gasoline for power purposes, was cheaper for motor[s] than gasoline in common use today."