Daily Archives: August 4, 2016

Economic Sustentation 21: Climate Change

When it comes to damnation, this is a doozy. While many damnations have a silver lining — a pocket of hope in a coat of despair — this is not one of them. Climate change is wiping out your crops, closing your shipping lanes, and, sometimes, killing your people.

Let’s consider the climate change shock waves discussed in our initial damnation post.

Hotter summers

More drought. More wildfires. More loss of crop, and more loss of life.

Colder winters

More blizzards and ice storms that shut down cities. More cold spells that freeze people to death.

More regulations

More paperwork hell as a result of dumb politicians, who confuse feelings with facts, that pass laws that often do the opposite of what they intend those laws to do (and almost never what they should do).

What can you do?

Very little, except do your best to prepare for the coming apocalypse and mitigate it as best you can.

1. Geographically Diversify Sourcing of Raw Materials

While major natural disasters can be devastating, they are usually localized to a small region so if you are sourcing from multiple regions, your entire supply is never affected at one time.

2. Maintain multiple options

In food and beverage, substitute fresh with frozen. In electronics, have designs that can use alternate materials, even if those materials are more expensive or slightly less preferable. For example, maybe you want silver for your devices (because it is more conductive), but if silver becomes scarcer than expected, copper might still get the job done.

3. Artificial options

For example, field grown is usually preferable (better, cheaper), but greenhouse grown is viable if it’s the only way to guarantee supply. (But not GMO over heirloom. Don’t believe the extravagant claims by those that profit most from GMO.) Zirconia can often replace diamonds. With a hardness of 9.5 on the 10 Mohs scale, it can often be substituted in high pressure experiments and in high power SiC electronic devices. Be creative. We’re coming into a world where only the strong, and ingenious, survive.