Back in 2019 there was a risk that the UK would exit the EU with no trade deal at all, and supply chains would be sufficiently disrupted that shop shelves would run empty etc.
So we built up a contingency stash in the room upstairs, mainly baby things: medicine, nappies, long-life milk, etc, then added tinned and dry goods like pasta and chopped tomatoes.
We didn’t need it. (My guess is that supermarkets and suppliers had assessed the risk and built up their warehouses, which stabilised those first few weeks.)
BUT our Brexit No Deal stash had a second life as a Covid Supermarkets Can’t Cope stash.
Online orders were rationed in the first lockdown in early 2020. Our existing accounts we used to get deliveries for our parents. Then for a few weeks we couldn’t get groceries – we dipped into the stash a few times (then kept it topped up). Handy.
I have been eying the remainder of the contingency stash. Time to wind it down? Maybe. Maybe not.
These days supermarket shelves run empty frequently enough that they’ve printed special boxes to fill the space. Post-Brexit problems with not enough delivery drivers? Or the “pingdemic” – a half million people are self-isolating right now because they’ve been pinged by the Covid contact tracing system. So the shops are all short-staffed. Or is it just that online grocery orders are being prioritised over actual shelves? (E-commerce has boomed in the UK, way more than the US.)
Then there are the flash floods in London from recent storms. I look at the closed roads and think, well clearly that’s not going to help.
I mean it’s multi-factor isn’t it.
One thing reduces resilience in the supply chain such that another thing knocks it out entirely.
And it’s global and it’s unpredictable. The Suez Canal shutdown led to garden gnome shortages in Whitminster. Hard to imagine that would have happened before a year of the system being stressed with Covid. (All the shipping containers are in the wrong places. The cost of a container on the Asia-Europe route is up 5x.)
All of which means I’m looking at my stash (after almost two years) and thinking maybe it has a third life as an Extreme Weather Event contingency larder.
I hadn’t expected that. I live in the UK, and we don’t have earthquakes or wildfires so I’ve never had to make up a Go Bag.
But honestly I look at the weather, here, and think of the ancient viruses being thawed out in the permafrost, a thousand miles away, and this is basically the rest of my life now isn’t it. Always keep a cache of dried pasta and garden gnomes in the back room, you never know.
The world is fragile.
Rod McLaren invented a word for it in his latest edition of the Co-op Digital newsletter, which is ostensibly about technology and groceries. But:
Every newsletter is now a climate change newsletter, because climate change is the landscape now. We now live in the “entropocene”, an era of larger, quicker, less predictable, non-linear change.
The Entropocene. The new geological era of entropy.
It turn out McLaren’s Entropocene is a parallel coinage because of course it is – all experiences are shared global experiences now.
Here, for example, in an article also introducing this new word, is a strong plea to stop using the word Anthropocene to refer to this new epoch:
Have you ever felt the toxic touch of the word “Anthropocene”? If you haven’t, I could put it in a simple way. Considering that the near-collapsing state of our planet is due to the Anthropos in general means that we take the Inuits or the Jivaros for responsible of the situation, in the same way that our modern occidental civilization. This sounds absurd, since they are amongst the first victims of capitalistic greed, deforestation, and climate change. And that all in the name of a “universal mankind” (the Anthropos), a concept they never ask or stand for. In other words, one is mistaking the victims for the predators when using the word Anthropocene. And it all sounds like the last dirty joke of Western White Man, his Empires and his Capital.
It is a great point.
Yes, the concept of the Anthropocene points out that humans wield global power and have global impact. When archaeologists a million years hence dig down, there will be a line of microplastics, radioactivity, and high atmospheric CO2, and they’ll point to the thin stratum and say, aha, the human era.
But as they say: not all humans.
Yes this is an era characterised by a general and accelerated process towards the maximal disorder leading to social and political dislocation - entropy - but Disaster Capitalism is not a universal phenomenon. It is incorrect to pin the Anthropocene on humankind at large. So let’s not bake it into the name.
‘Yes, we’ll see them together some Saturday afternoon then,’ she said. ‘I won’t have any hand in your not going to Cathedral on Sunday morning. I suppose we must be getting back. What time was it when you looked at your watch just now?’ "In China and some other countries it is not considered necessary to give the girls any education; but in Japan it is not so. The girls are educated here, though not so much as the boys; and of late years they have established schools where they receive what we call the higher branches of instruction. Every year new schools for girls are opened; and a great many of the Japanese who formerly would not be seen in public with their wives have adopted the Western idea, and bring their wives into society. The marriage laws have been arranged so as to allow the different classes to marry among[Pg 258] each other, and the government is doing all it can to improve the condition of the women. They were better off before than the women of any other Eastern country; and if things go on as they are now going, they will be still better in a few years. The world moves. "Frank and Fred." She whispered something to herself in horrified dismay; but then she looked at me with her eyes very blue and said "You'll see him about it, won't you? You must help unravel this tangle, Richard; and if you do I'll--I'll dance at your wedding; yours and--somebody's we know!" Her eyes began forewith. Lawrence laughed silently. He seemed to be intensely amused about something. He took a flat brown paper parcel from his pocket. making a notable addition to American literature. I did truly. "Surely," said the minister, "surely." There might have been men who would have remembered that Mrs. Lawton was a tough woman, even for a mining town, and who would in the names of their own wives have refused to let her cross the threshold of their homes. But he saw that she was ill, and he did not so much as hesitate. "I feel awful sorry for you sir," said the Lieutenant, much moved. "And if I had it in my power you should go. But I have got my orders, and I must obey them. I musn't allow anybody not actually be longing to the army to pass on across the river on the train." "Throw a piece o' that fat pine on the fire. Shorty," said the Deacon, "and let's see what I've got." "Further admonitions," continued the Lieutenant, "had the same result, and I was about to call a guard to put him under arrest, when I happened to notice a pair of field-glasses that the prisoner had picked up, and was evidently intending to appropriate to his own use, and not account for them. This was confirmed by his approaching me in a menacing manner, insolently demanding their return, and threatening me in a loud voice if I did not give them up, which I properly refused to do, and ordered a Sergeant who had come up to seize and buck-and-gag him. The Sergeant, against whom I shall appear later, did not obey my orders, but seemed to abet his companion's gross insubordination. The scene finally culminated, in the presence of a number of enlisted men, in the prisoner's wrenching the field-glasses away from me by main force, and would have struck me had not the Sergeant prevented this. It was such an act as in any other army in the world would have subjected the offender to instant execution. It was only possible in—" "Don't soft-soap me," the old woman snapped. "I'm too old for it and I'm too tough for it. I want to look at some facts, and I want you to look at them, too." She paused, and nobody said a word. "I want to start with a simple statement. We're in trouble." RE: Fruyling's World "MACDONALD'S GATE" "Read me some of it." "Well, I want something better than that." HoME大香蕉第一时间
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Back in 2019 there was a risk that the UK would exit the EU with no trade deal at all, and supply chains would be sufficiently disrupted that shop shelves would run empty etc.
So we built up a contingency stash in the room upstairs, mainly baby things: medicine, nappies, long-life milk, etc, then added tinned and dry goods like pasta and chopped tomatoes.
We didn’t need it. (My guess is that supermarkets and suppliers had assessed the risk and built up their warehouses, which stabilised those first few weeks.)
BUT our Brexit No Deal stash had a second life as a Covid Supermarkets Can’t Cope stash.
Online orders were rationed in the first lockdown in early 2020. Our existing accounts we used to get deliveries for our parents. Then for a few weeks we couldn’t get groceries – we dipped into the stash a few times (then kept it topped up). Handy.
I have been eying the remainder of the contingency stash. Time to wind it down? Maybe. Maybe not.
These days supermarket shelves run empty frequently enough that they’ve printed special boxes to fill the space. Post-Brexit problems with not enough delivery drivers? Or the “pingdemic” – a half million people are self-isolating right now because they’ve been pinged by the Covid contact tracing system. So the shops are all short-staffed. Or is it just that online grocery orders are being prioritised over actual shelves? (E-commerce has boomed in the UK, way more than the US.)
Then there are the flash floods in London from recent storms. I look at the closed roads and think, well clearly that’s not going to help.
I mean it’s multi-factor isn’t it.
One thing reduces resilience in the supply chain such that another thing knocks it out entirely.
And it’s global and it’s unpredictable. The Suez Canal shutdown led to garden gnome shortages in Whitminster. Hard to imagine that would have happened before a year of the system being stressed with Covid. (All the shipping containers are in the wrong places. The cost of a container on the Asia-Europe route is up 5x.)
All of which means I’m looking at my stash (after almost two years) and thinking maybe it has a third life as an Extreme Weather Event contingency larder.
I hadn’t expected that. I live in the UK, and we don’t have earthquakes or wildfires so I’ve never had to make up a Go Bag.
But honestly I look at the weather, here, and think of the ancient viruses being thawed out in the permafrost, a thousand miles away, and this is basically the rest of my life now isn’t it. Always keep a cache of dried pasta and garden gnomes in the back room, you never know.
The world is fragile.
Rod McLaren invented a word for it in his latest edition of the Co-op Digital newsletter, which is ostensibly about technology and groceries. But:
The Entropocene. The new geological era of entropy.
It turn out McLaren’s Entropocene is a parallel coinage because of course it is – all experiences are shared global experiences now.
Here, for example, in an article also introducing this new word, is a strong plea to stop using the word Anthropocene to refer to this new epoch:
It is a great point.
Yes, the concept of the Anthropocene points out that humans wield global power and have global impact. When archaeologists a million years hence dig down, there will be a line of microplastics, radioactivity, and high atmospheric CO2, and they’ll point to the thin stratum and say, aha, the human era.
But as they say: not all humans.
Yes this is an era characterised by a - entropy - but Disaster Capitalism is not a universal phenomenon. It is incorrect to pin the Anthropocene on humankind at large. So let’s not bake it into the name.
Entropocene it is.