The Collapse of Human Civilization as we Know it – Scenarios and Potential Solutions

[Time for change]

Human civilization as we know it will come to an end in the foreseeable future. We don’t know exactly when or how. It may be soon. It will most certainly be well underway within the next two generations.

One of the most comprehensive explanations I’ve ever read how societies fail was written by Jared Diamond in “Collapse – How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed” (Chosen as “Best Book of the Year” by The Boston Globe, the Los Angeles Times, The Washington Post, the San Francisco Chronicle and others). Diamond’s book describes the environmental causes of past and present failed societies, such as the collapse of the ancient Easter Island civilization, and compares them with other societies that have succeeded, in order to identify the causes of failed societies. The theme of his book can be summarized as: Environmental crisis + failure of society to address it ==> societal collapse.

After describing the reasons for the collapse of several ancient civilizations, in the last chapter of his book Diamond describes the twelve most serious environmental problems that humanity faces today – including the new ones of worldwide energy depletion, chemical pollution of our water, air, and soil, and global warming. He notes that of the twelve environmental problems he described, many of them exacerbate each other, thus producing a vicious cycle. He then summarizes our current situation:

Our world society is presently on a non-sustainable course, and any of our 12 problems of non-sustainability that we have just summarized would suffice to limit our lifestyle within the next several decades. They are like time bombs with fuses of less than 50 years…. Any of the dozen problems if unsolved would do us grave harm… If we solved 11 of the problems, but not the 12th, we would still be in trouble… We have to solve them all.

I discuss his book in much more detail in this post.


SCENARIOS FOR THE DISRUPTION OF WORLD-WIDE CIVILIZATION

Nobody who has made an informed and honest assessment of our looming environmental crises believes that we will get out of it without major disruption of our civilization. But different observers have different takes on how it might play out. What almost all have in common is that there is a wide range of possibilities, and the sooner we begin seriously addressing the problems the better off we’ll be.


Jared Diamond

Diamond stresses the need to resolve these problems consciously, rather than waiting for them to overtake us. The whole thrust of his book is devoted to showing how some civilizations have managed to come through major crises without being totally destroyed, by taking preemptive action, whereas those that refuse to see the light have totally collapsed. Here is how he paints the coming scenario, near the end of his book:

Thus, because we are rapidly advancing along this non-sustainable course, the world’s environmental problems will get resolved, in one way or another within the lifetime of the children and young adults alive today. The only question is whether they will become resolved in pleasant ways of our own choice, or in unpleasant ways not of our choice, such as warfare, genocide, starvation, disease epidemics, and collapses of societies. While all of those grim phenomena have been endemic to humanity throughout our history, their frequency increases with environmental degradation, population pressure, and the resulting poverty and political instability.

Bill McKibben

Bill McKibben’s approach to the subject is in some ways similar to Diamond’s, in that he notes that our present and future actions will tremendously impact how well we come through this crisis. The main difference in approach between Diamond’s “Collapse” and McKibben’s book, “Eaarth – Making a Life on a Tough New Planet”, is that “Collapse” focuses primarily on past crises, whereas “Eaarth” focuses almost solely on the present and the future.

McKibben emphasizes that major catastrophic changes in the physical characteristics of our planet have occurred in recent years, primarily resulting from a rise in global temperatures, including among other things: 22% less Arctic sea ice than ever previously observed, so that the North Pole could be circumnavigated for the first time in human history; rapidly melting glaciers that constitute reservoirs of water for billions of people; a 17 cm rise in sea level during the 20th century resulting in the disappearance beneath the sea of an uninhabited island (Kiribati) in 1998, an inhabited island (Lohachara) in 2006, and the submerging of several more islands since that time; acidification of our oceans; four times the number of weather disasters in the last thirty years as in the first 75 years of the 20th Century; drying up of large rivers, and; major droughts in Australia, the American Southwest, China, India, Brazil and Argentina.

He notes that if we continue on our present course we are facing the high likelihood of world-wide catastrophe. Because of deteriorating vital resources such as water, according to some recent models as many as 700 million of the world’s 9 billion people will be climate change refugees by 2050. And a Pentagon-sponsored report forecasts:

possible scenarios a decade or two away, when the pressures of climate change have become “irresistible – history shows that whenever humans have faced a choice between starving or raiding, they raid… As abrupt climate change hits home, warfare may again come to define human life.”

Thus it is that we can’t undo the damage we’ve done to our planet any time soon, nor can we totally prevent additional catastrophic damage from taking place in the coming years. The best we can do is limit further damage as best we can, and plan for how to live on our greatly changed planet – what many refer to as a “soft landing”. In the last paragraph of his book, Mckibben summarizes those thoughts:

It’s true that by some measures we started too late, that the planet has changed and that it will change more… The momentum of the heating, and the momentum of the economy that powers it can’t be turned off quickly enough to prevent hideous damage. But we will keep fighting, in the hope that we can limit that damage. And in the process, with many others fighting similar battles, we’ll help build the architecture for the world that comes next, the dispersed and localized societies that can survive the damage we can no longer prevent. Eaarth (that is, the drastically changed planet that we have created) represents the deepest of human failures. But we still must live on the world we’ve created – lightly, carefully, gracefully.

Jeremy Rifkin

Jeremy Rifkin’s book, “The Empathic Civilization – The Race to Global Consciousness in a World in Crisis”, is primarily about the wonders of human empathy. Consequently, with regard to our looming crises he seems considerably more optimistic than McKibbin or Diamond, and unlike them he doesn’t do much to address the problem other than to note that our fate hinges largely on whether or not human empathy can help us to transcend our many failings. Nevertheless he recognizes the crises that we face and he knows that his book wouldn’t be complete without noting them. Here are some of the things he says about our crises in his book:

Every great civilization has had its fair share of holocausts… Lamentably, the empathic drive is often shunted aside in the heat of the moment when social forces teeter on disintegration. We may be approaching such a moment now…

May be??

Geopolitics has always been based on the assumption that the environment is a giant battleground – a war of all against all – where we fight with one another to secure resources to ensure our individual survival. There is simply nowhere any longer for any of us to escape or to hide, because the entropic bill (Rifkin’s phrase for the many environmental and social crises that we face today) our species has created has now enveloped the Earth and threatens our mass extinction…

We are entering a new phase in which the “real-time” impacts of climate change are beginning to impinge on whole regions of the world, affecting large segments of humanity. The first reactions coming in are fear and anger on the part of the early victims and feigned interest among those not yet affected.

Derrick Jensen

Jensen exhibits one of the most pessimistic approaches to our looming catastrophe. He does not talk of “soft landings” because he seems to be convinced that those who currently hold power will never allow it. He makes that point in his book, “Endgame – Volume II – Resistance”:

You and I both know that the civilized (Here he’s lumping together the U.S. elites and the mass of the U.S. citizenry who accept the status quo and don’t challenge their leaders) will not give up their golf and their lawns and their swimming pools and their cheap cotton, no matter the cost to humans, no matter the cost to the planet. We can say the same for many other vital resources… The U.S. military consumes more than 50 percent of the oil used in the United States. Imagine how different the crash might play out if that oil were used to soften our landing, or if it were not burned at all. The military’s use is not essential for keeping people alive. It is, however, essential for the ongoing theft of resources we call civilization…

I have absolutely no doubt that when those who run the United States feel their power slipping, whether through oil shortages, external invasion, internal revolt, or ecological collapse, they will have no moral qualms about nuking anywhere they feel necessary, including places in the United States…

So this is how Jensen sees the crash playing out:

As demand for cheap energy continues to outstrip supply, the United States and other industrialized nations will continue to invade regions containing oil. Environmental regulations will be systematically gutted or ignored. Those who effectively oppose oil extraction will be bought off, silenced, or killed. But no matter how many regions the industrialized nations invade… supply for oil will never again exceed demand. Oil prices will continue to rise, leading to the eventual strangulation of the entire economy… Rising energy costs will undoubtedly hasten the consolidation of the already mammoth conglomerates that control the economy… and they will drive prices up and wages down. Unemployment will continue to rise. The gap between rich and poor will continue to widen. Spending on the military, police, and prisons will continue to climb. Starvation will continue to increase, as the poor continue to be denied access to land and water…

As an ever-greater percentage of governmental spending is aimed toward security… for those who steal resources and security from those whose lives and landbases are ruined, less money will be available to provide basic maintenance for infrastructure. This is already happening. The infrastructure will continue to degrade. The more the infrastructure degrades, the more the stockpiles of food, oil and gas… will be controlled by the military, police, and other warlords. We see this already in U.S. – occupied Afghanistan, and elsewhere. The already faint line between corporations and governments will fade… Mussolini’s definition of fascism – the merger of state and corporate power – will be complete. We see this already… Forced labor and slavery will become ubiquitous… People will be worked to death… Portions of cities may be sealed off to prevent those inside from escaping or getting food… Most cities will become effectively uninhabitable, and industrial civilization as we know it will be over…

POTENTIAL SOLUTIONS

Derrick Jensen

Consistent with Jensen’s view that those in power will never relinquish it without taking everyone else down with them, he believes that we have to use whatever means necessary to save our planet and the life that it supports. He believes that those in power, through their greed and recklessness leading to an unsustainable civilization, have sown the seeds of their own demise. It would be better to take them down sooner, but if we can’t, this is how he sees it playing out:

The breakdown of the infrastructure will reduce the effectiveness of the military and police, who rely partly on high-tech communications and energy-intensive mobility to kill or capture their targets. This reduced effectiveness will lead to a gradual return of power to the local level as it becomes impossible to maintain distant control without massive inputs of cheap energy… There will be those who attempt to seize power. There will be fights over resources… Soon cars will sputter to a stop… There will be only the sounds of living beings. No machines… Local battles are eminently winnable… Without the full power of the state, the rich are no longer rich. They are simply people in big houses with big swimming pools and big piles of paper claiming they own big plots of land. Big deal. Cut these people off from their support by the colonizers, and the poor will be able to take back the land that is currently used to produce nonfood crops… What, at its essence, does military technology do? It allows one person to kill many. That has always been the point. With the technology in place you have thousands of starving people being held back by mobile police forces with guns. But without an industrial infrastructure, soon enough a gun is nothing but a metal pipe attached to a piece of wood. Take away these technologies – take away the full power of the state – and you have thousands of starving people with machetes up against a rich guy and the people he used to pay holding guns that will soon run out of bullets. I’ll put my money with the starving people. I’ll stake my life with them.

Jeremy Rifkin

Rifkin notes that a shift to an economy based on renewable energy, rather than on fossil fuels, will facilitate a much more conflict-free world. He explains:

Because renewable energies are more or less equally distributed around the world, every region is potentially amply endowed with the power it needs to be relatively self-sufficient and sustainable in its lifestyle, while at the same time interconnected via smart grids to other regions across countries and continents… When every community is locally empowered… it can engage directly in … global trade without the severe restrictions that are imposed by the geopolitics that oversee elite fossil fuels and uranium energy distribution…

The European Union is already beginning to put in place the infrastructure for a European-wide energy regime… Asian, African, and Latin American continental political unions are also in the making and will likely be the premier governing institutions on their respective continents by 2050…

Because of that and because our current reliance on fossil fuels is destroying our society and our planet, Rifkin talks about the need to shift to an economy based on renewable energy sources. He says that we need to:

rethink the conventional wisdom that has brought us to this dangerous impasse in human history and to prepare a powerful new narrative for the generations that will follow and in whose hands will rest the awesome responsibility of re-healing the Earth and creating a sustainable planet… Climate change is forcing us, as never before, to recognize our shared humanity and our common plight…My sense is that while the initial response to climate change has teetered somewhere between disinterest, denial, and, at best, weak acceptance – that is, without commensurate emotional and political commitment – that is going to change rapidly in the coming decades as the effects of climate change ripple out and impinge on larger pools of humanity…

As I said before, Rifkin’s view of this issue is considerably more optimistic than most. His book was published in 2009, before the utter failure of the Copenhagen Summit and before the topic of climate change pretty much dropped out of public discourse in the United States. He has it right that we need a major shift to renewable energy, but he doesn’t give much thought to the obstacles involved in accomplishing that. That isn’t the subject of his book. Nevertheless, Rifkin shows on the last page of his book that he doesn’t consider it a foregone conclusion that our society will adequately address this issue:

At some critical point, the realization will set in that we share a common planet, that we are all affected, and that our neighbors’ suffering is not unlike our own… Only by concerted action that establishes a collective sense of affiliation with the entire biosphere will we have a chance to ensure our future… But our rush to universal empathic connectivity is running up against a rapidly accelerating entropic juggernaut in the form of climate change and the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction…

Jared Diamond

The premise of Diamond’s book is that we need to learn the lessons of the failures of past societies that collapsed and became extinct, as well as that of those that successfully overcame the environmental crises they were faced with. He points out that there is one major difference between these past crises and the one we face today. Those past crises involved localized areas of the world. When societies collapsed, the inhabitants at least had some options of moving on to other geographical areas. Today’s environmental crises involve the whole planet. The possibility for escape is much more limited.

Yet we have much more information today about the collapse of past societies than those societies had about the previous ones. Their primary error was that despite a number of clues that they could have picked up, they gave too little thought for the future. In their zeal to live for the present they depleted their resources and polluted their environment to the point that it became unsustainable. Diamond concludes his book with:

Thus, we have the opportunity to learn from the mistakes of distant peoples and past peoples. That’s an opportunity that no past society enjoyed to such a degree. My hope in writing this book has been that enough people will choose to profit from that opportunity to make a difference.

Bill McKibben

McKibben devotes the whole of the last chapter of his book – 62 pages – to recommending how we can live through our crisis in the best way possible.

He notes that our society currently favors corporate domination over most aspects of our economy, and he discusses ways in which we can and must shed our perceived and real reliance on corporations (and their rule over us) for the necessities of life. For example:

We need to stop thinking of farming in abstract terms, as a “low rung on the ladder of economic development”, and remember again what it involves: using water and sunshine to grow plants… In the last ten years academics and researchers have begun figuring out what some farmers have known for a long time: it’s possible to produce lots of food on small farms with little or nothing in the way of synthetic fertilizer or chemicals…

He notes the political difficulties involved:

If our farming is really going to shift back in time to let us deal with the new conditions we’ve unleashed here on the planet Eaarth it will take dramatic change… The biggest shifts required will be political. There are “farms” in the United States with hundreds of thousands of swine, producing more sewage each day than big cities. The animals are miserable, the pollution is intense, and it’s all utterly unsustainable – by some estimates, as much as half of global warming gases can be tied to the livestock industry… But it makes a few big corporations rich, and it keeps the price of food incredibly low, and that bargain – enshrined in one federal farm bill after another – has prevailed for two generations. We’d need to challenge the power of those companies, and we’d need to be willing to pay our neighbors enough to grow our food so that they could lead decent lives…

McKibben describes the basics of what we need to accomplish to save our planet: 1) We need to cut our fossil fuel use by a factor of 20 over the next few decades, in order to return atmospheric carbon dioxide to 350 ppm; 2) It would be a lot easier for us if we replace fossil fuels with practical renewable energy sources (He notes that one day’s use of fossil fuel by the average American today represents enough energy for 2 years worth of manual labor); and 3) We need to conserve much more energy than we do today.

He notes that the Internet can be a crucially useful tool towards decentralizing our economy and our lives and helping us get through this crisis:

About 1% of the world’s electric supply goes to operating the data network… You can make a thousand Google searches with the same amount of fossil fuel it takes to drive a car 0.6 miles. Which is important, because often those searches serve the same purpose… you’re engaging with the world, finding something new… The Internet can take waste and convert it into something useful… People just keep figuring out more ways to use a medium much more pliable than anything that came before. For one thing, it’s cheap… And it’s oddly meritocratic… Most, though, it’s decentralized… All of a sudden it’s possible to have the cultural equivalent of farmers’ markets… That decentralization will be crucial, because all of a sudden we need vast amounts of information… For instance, far more people are going to need to grow food…

POTENTIAL SOLUTIONS IN PERSPECTIVE

Each of the four authors discussed in this post contribute much value in our efforts to find a way to address our looming environmental crisis, which will undoubtedly result in more widespread suffering and death and could lead to the extinction of our species and many other species as well.

Jensen’s ideas are the most radical. Since some of his solutions could be construed as bordering on illegality I won’t advocate for them, as doing so is against DU rules and could get me in trouble with the U.S government. And furthermore, I have no plan for challenging the rich and powerful in the ways that Jensen suggests. However, I will say that I believe his book is well worth reading. And I will note that the Declaration that founded our country specifically says that his recommendations could be construed as being morally justified:

Whenever any form of government becomes destructive to these ends (i.e. life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness), it is the right of the people to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new government… as to them shall seem most likely to effect their safety and happiness.

Rifkin’s statement that “Only by concerted action that establishes a collective sense of affiliation with the entire biosphere will we have a chance to ensure our future” appears to be right on target. However, standing in the way of our “collective sense of affiliation” are a group of very wealthy, powerful, and influential individuals and corporations that seek primarily to increase their wealth and power, with little thought to the future consequences of our planet. We need to give a lot of thought to how to deal with that.

Diamond’s extensive study of the collapse of past civilizations should be of great value in helping us to recognize the immensity of the problem we face and how we might deal with it. A society that is unable or unwilling to learn from the past sets itself up for ultimate failure.

McKibben’s book is the best of any I have read on discussing solutions to the vast and dangerous environmental problems that we face today. There are myriad technical issues, relating to how we can convert to an economy based on renewable energy; there are the political issues of how to overcome the resistance of the wealthy and powerful to any diminution of their wealth and power; and there are the psychological issues of how billions of people can learn to adjust to great changes in their life-style before it is too late. McKibben addresses all of these issues in much more detail than I’m able to relate here, and I would highly recommend his book to anyone who thinks they might have a role to play in this effort. I will also note that Al Gore wrote a book, “Our Choice: A Plan to Solve the Climate Crisis”, which goes into much more technical detail than McKibben did in his book – though it’s not at all easy to read, because of the intensity of technical detail.

These issues are crucially important to the health of our planet and the survival of our species, and yet they have been largely ignored by our corporate media and only marginally addressed by our government. Failure to do better will result in unimaginable human catastrophe.

[northoftheborder]

1. Thanks for your interesting and valuable review on these books. I've put a couple on my list.

[bbgrunt]

2. thanks for this review. I wish I could think that Jensen's

solution were possible, because the others seem improbable given the insanity we see around us, but it will be awfully hard to get to those sequestered in underground cities with stockpiled supplies (enough for years) to out-wait all the violence and turmoil.....and those are NOT the ones who should carry the genetic seeds to repopulate what's left of the planet.

[raouldukelives]

3. K&R Great read as always

[slipslidingaway]

4. Thanks once again ...

you are truly an asset to DU.

[Time for change]

59. Thank you

[Hawkowl]

5. Thank you!

Great reviews. I love Jared Diamond and look forward to reading the others this year!

[Time for change]

60. Great - I hope you enjoy them

[JCMach1]

6. I would also recommend Friedman's. "Hot Flat and Crowded"

for 'perhaps' a more positive spin on things...

[RUMMYisFROSTED]

28. Everything will be better in 6 months?

:shrug:

[wial]

71. that's a good question:

how does a political/military FU convert into a climate change FU?

[RUMMYisFROSTED]

89. A: Apply a lot of hot wind.

[JCMach1]

85. Hardly, but he at least gives some easier solutions than some of the gloomers...

Jared Diamond, however, is a top-notch theorist...

[earcandle]

7. Thank you, dear sir!

[tomp]

8. i do try to be optimistic, really, i do. nt

[rhett o rick]

9. Thanks once again for your hard work putting these posts together. nm

[whatchamacallit]

10. Good stuff. Thanks. n/t

[Overseas]

11. K&R. I thought the Bush Crash would be the spur to our 21st Century FDR.

I thought a serious Truth & Reconciliation series would reinforce the need for more dramatic changes in our military policies, which could give us the money and motivation to pursue more lasting changes in our national priorities.

I think the millions who voted Democrats into power were also hoping for more dramatic changes toward good government, serving the majority of our citizens, rather than the Top 10 Percent who had been the focus of our Trickle Down policies that had not worked and had culminated in another giant economic crash, similar to the Great Depression.

I was so sure that with conditions so very close to the last Great Depression, Democrats would hold firm to the solutions that helped us out of that period when we also believed favoring the rich would lift all boats. It led to a major crash then and it did so again in 2008. I didn't expect the Democrats to waste time pretending that the party that crashed our economy, Modern Republicans, had anything worthy to contribute to finding solutions this time.

If the polling data they listened to had said "People are tired of all the bickering. They want more bipartisanship." -- My Democratic administration could have taken a different course, if they hadn't been so averse to the effective campaigning of Howard Dean. They could have been bipartisan in a new way-- bipartisan with what the Republican party claimed to stand for. The 50-state strategy was all about looking truthfully at modern Republican claims versus the realities of their governance.

Modern Republicans crashed our economy. Traditional Republicans claimed to stand for fiscal responsibility-- so we will put millions of people back to work which will stimulate local economies across the nation, who really need help after the Bush Crash. Furthermore, those jobs will be fiscally responsible because they will repair our infrastructure which was allowed to decay to finance the Bush Wars. An updated infrastructure will enable small domestic businesses to function more smoothly. The massive repairs will also green our infrastructure, to preserve precious petroleum resources for generations to come, and provide the support needed for our country to catch up with international competitors in green technology.

Traditional Republicans claimed to stand for a strong, smart national defense. The modern Republicans added many more layers of bureaucracy to our national security effort, rather than updating and retooling the ample security systems we already had. Modern Republicans continued the brutal outdated bombing wars of the 20th Century which created more and more enemies for our country and actually increased Al Qaeda membership. While that enhanced the military industrial complex which they have favored for a long time now, our fellow citizens could have been inspired by a thorough review of war profiteering and ways we could achieve our aims for national security more effectively and sustainably going forward.

If those kinds of declarations were just too laughable when applied to modern Republican legislators, our Democratic administration could have been bipartisan with Republican Voters. That could have been very exciting. "We were honored to have so many Republicans vote for us this time. We think that is because you want our country to be more fiscally responsible and smarter about our national security and that is just what we will do." Our Democratic leaders could have ignored the Republican legislators and appealed directly to the values that Republican voters support, by showing them just how the new policies would be more fiscally responsible and strengthen our national security.

But my Democratic leaders did not do that. They turned to policies that were already old-fashioned and counterproductive for our nation's long term health back in the 90's when they were introduced. The "New Democrat" garbage garnered major increases in campaign donations for Democrats, but undermined our long term economic health and national security by giving more and more power to multinational corporations that have more money and power than many nation states.

[Time for change]

58. I like your idea about being bipartisan with "what the Republicans claim to stand for"

That should be a talking point that we hammer home. There just isn't anywhere near enough being done to call them out on their hypocrisy.

[Overseas]

88. Thank you. We can still do it. //nt

[treestar]

12. Unrec'd for the absurdity of the first sentence

[bhikkhu]

23. Yes, there is that.

Human civilization is continually changing. Had I made that statement 20 years ago myself I could make a pretty convincing case that the civilization of that time has been replaced by the inferior copy we have now. "There will be change" is about as safe a pronouncement as can be made.

[Name removed]

31. Deleted message

Message removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

[cali]

13. lol.

why bother worrying about it?

[GliderGuider]

15. Why bother worrying about it?

Because there are useful things that we as individuals can do if we recognize what's really going on.

[tama]

22. What's really going on?

Liberation from fear, that is what is going on. By facing our fears we are transforming them into love and compassion.

I loved this technocratic civilization and consumerism and especially culture and philosophy and arts dearly. When I realized the party was going end pretty soon, love turned into fear of losing and then hatred against the self-destructive and oppressive ways of civilization. I have faced this fear and found new confidence. Everything is fine and will be better!

There is a BIG LOAD of fear and anger running rampant in America and elsewhere currently, but by the end of this year things will look very different. Well much the same, but seen through reality and self-realization of confidence, compassion and creativity instead of lense of fear. This is the Year of Peace. The soldiers from both sides,no matter from which sides, they are joining in song and prayer, climbing out from their trenches like they did on Christmas eve 1914 in the 1st World War.

Peace and Love, Brother!

[GliderGuider]

39. Bingo!

That exactly describes my process over the last few years. Awareness turned to astonishment, then to outrage, to fear, to hatred, and finally to utter despair. At the bottom of that pit, when I let go and surrendered, I discovered hope waiting in the darkness. It's not the hope of wind turbines, solar power and permaculture, but the deeper hope that comes from a transformation of the human spirit. When that transformation happens, there is joy in life no matter what else happens. I agree - this is going to be a remarkable watershed year.

[Duer 157099]

65. Very beautifully put. I hope you are correct.

The picture that comes to my mind when reading your post was that scene in "How the Grinch Stole Christmas" where after the Grinch has stolen everything from the townspeople, somehow they all still managed to gather together and sing and enjoy Christmas. The stuff of fairy tales, and yet I hope it happens that way.

[OneGrassRoot]

66. Bravo!

Well said, tama!

:applause:

:hug:

2011: The Year of Compassion & Empathy

[cali]

34. look, the only thing to do if you believe the collapse of society is imminent

is to move to the country and become as self-sufficient as possible and to become part of a community.

[GliderGuider]

36. Really? The ONLY thing to do?

According to who?

That may seem like the most appropriate response to you, but there are 6.9 billion other people out here, and every last one of us is different.

For me the right thing to do is to wade into the middle of the mess and experience it as fully as possible, while helping those around me as much as I can, both materially and spiritually. I think self-sufficiency is an illusion (as much of an illusion as the self itself), but I think community is crucial - no matter what happens to society.

[tama]

41. The Warrior's Way :)

You're a Wonder!

I spent last summer in an ecovillage in the deep countryside. Getting healed, learning a lot, experiencing and accepting many miracles of beauty and wonder.

Then I moved into a community in the border zone - the Suburb - between Urban and Rural. Border zones are where It happens, places of Power and greatest fertility and creativity and magic.

And I'm still the same old lazy bastard with very few practical skills and little interest in people other than Me Myself, totally dependent from state money and members of my community. A bum. But for some strange reason, world just keeps giving me wonders and wonderfull surprises... so what to think? ;)

[femrap]

49. The problem is

GLOBAL. There is nowhere to run, really.

There are too many people and not enough resources.

QUIT BREEDING! RECYCLE! We're 5% of the world's population and consume 25% of the resources. Now with China, India, Brazil starting to develop, it's just going to get worse.

Mother Nature will have the last say. No one or no thing has more power than her.

[BOG PERSON]

57. really?

what can i, as an individual, do to stop the sky from falling?

[GliderGuider]

62. If the sky was falling you could do very little.

Is the sky falling?

[BOG PERSON]

63. is that a rhetorical question?

[GliderGuider]

69. Would you like it to be?

:evilgrin:

[Tuesday Afternoon]

21. what? me worry?

[cali]

35. what's the point? Look, all of the woe the end is nigh types

should get off their woeful asses and do something to ensure their survival if they're so worked up about the coming apocalypse.

[tama]

43. Survival?

End is nigh means just new beginning. Why would one want to survive The End, if the New Beginning was not Wonderfull Opportunity for more wonders to experience?

Survivalism sucks deep. Nothing but fear there.

[GliderGuider]

14. I've been a "fast-crash" doomer for a number of years now.

As far as I can tell our attempts to address the converging global crises of energy, ecology and economics are being stymied by both inner and outer factors. The inner factor is the evolved neuropsychology of our triune brain, in which the atavistic survival impulses of the reptilian brain team up with the herding instinct that comes from the limbic brain, to completely overwhelm the rational problem-solving function of the neocortex. The external factor is the reptilian-based hierarchic structure of our society. We have developed systems that are exceptionally good at pumping wealth and power from the general citizens to an ever-diminishing ruling class. We have developed a wide array of social institutions that support, encourage and protect this consolidation of power: corporations, all political systems, legal institutions, our education systems and communications media. Together these guardian institutions ensure that we believe that the current arrangement is the only possible way for humans to live, and promote the view that dissenters from this worldview are dangerous and perhaps even insane.

I'm convinced that we will not be able to prevent a massive shift in the structure of civilization as we run up against biophysical limits and systemic brittleness. In fact the shift is already under way, we just lack the historical context to recognize what's happening as an interlocked global, whole-species event. I don't think we will be able to reform our institutions to avoid or mitigate the change. The only response that will be helpful is individual and deeply personal. Rifkin points to it when he talks about "a collective sense of affiliation with the entire biosphere." Essentially what is required is a spiritual transformation of enough of humanity to seed a new way of relating to the planet as the old ways of domination and exploitation crack apart and fall away.

[InvisibleTouch]

17. Likewise. It will happen fast...

...and it will happen within our lifetimes. No doubt in my mind.

[hfojvt]

16. a reply at the halfway point

As Jensen says that people will not give up their "golf and their lawns and their swimming pools and their cheap cotton". It kinda strikes me that only one of those would I consider to be a necessity - the cotton as fabric for clothing. Of course, in America we have far more clothing than we need as we all have many multiple sets of clothes. The point of clothing becomes not to have something to wear, but to have something clean, in good repair and fashionable.

To me, a public swimming pool is also a great boost to quality of life, but there are more and more private pools in the United States as well.

The other two seem strange to me. I can easily give those up myself because I don't have them and don't want them. Well, I do half half an acre of lawn, but don't put lots of resources into it other than basic mowing, which I would gladly give up.

The other part leads me to a thought about sports. Today is Sunday which means that in 20 cities some 50,000+ fans will be driving multiple miles to spend a few hours watching two groups of large men bang into each other and throw a ball around. So that is ten million miles driven, if they drive an average of ten miles, and thus about 400,000 gallons of gasoline used just to get fans back and forth from the games. I suppose that is a very small drop in the bucket for a nation that uses 10 million barrels of oil a day, but it also seems completely unnecessary - it is just for the purpose of entertainment. Then there are the resources that are going into equipment, training, and flying the teams around. Somewhere I have an issue of Mother Jones that calculated the carbon footprint of professional sports. IIRC, baseball was the highest because of its 163 game season.

Then there's high school sports too. Lots of driving around for that. It won't be popular even here, but it seems to me that if we took global warming and other environmental problems seriously we would be cutting back on things that are just for entertainment, and we would find cheaper ways to amuse ourselves. Given that it is Sunday, one might also pick on church. How many gallons are being consumed today just to drive people to church. I would pick on that as well, even though I am going myself in about ten minutes, because so many people drive multiple miles to go to "their" church - a church that is the right denomination, has the right pastor, or the right congregation, or is, as one pastor put it to me, a place where they get 'filled'. When there is perhaps a church they could walk to.

We do these things, individually and as a society, because we feel we can afford them. The question is whether we are seeing, or paying, the true costs.

[bhikkhu]

20. Rather than pick on sports and church, why not pick on driving?

I love high school sports events, and I bicycle or walk the four blocks to the school to attend. If I went to church there are about 6 in walking distance. Weekend sports activity in good weather is a ride out with the guys. Its not hard in many places to have a full social life and participate in the community without driving; to some extent I think its easier - when you're not hidden away in a big metal cage everywhere you go, people can see you, you see people, and it feels much more like a community.

[hfojvt]

96. I noted that driving to church seemed to be a bigger problem

than just going to church. With h.s. sports, first there is driving the sports teams around, and inevitably some of the fans/parents will be driving to nearby towns to watch and cheer, and considering the location of high schools, even in small towns, most people simply are not going to walk to the game. It just seems like it is something that, since it is basically for entertainment, would be an obvious thing to give up if we took global warming seriously.

Who knows though, maybe manufacturing "guitar hero" takes more energy. My brother-in-law said that his daughters played with it for about two months before losing interest. Whereas my brother and I played for years about once a week with a simple football and a tee.

[bananas]

18. Could you expand a little on Al Gore's book?

You wrote, "I will also note that Al Gore wrote a book, “Our Choice: A Plan to Solve the Climate Crisis”, which goes into much more technical detail than McKibben did in his book – though it’s not at all easy to read, because of the intensity of technical detail."

[Time for change]

53. It resembles a textbook

It discusses several different type of energy alternatives, along with a detailed discussion of the pros and cons of each type. The last chapters talk about putting it all together to develop a comprehensive program of energy conservation and renewable energy. I believe that if all his suggestions were followed we'd come out of this as well as can be hoped for at this point. But the political obstacles are great, and we're making very little movement in the right direction. Gore also has a chapter on the political considerations.

Table of Contents:
Introduction
1. What Goes up Must Come Down
2. Where our Energy Comes from and Where it Goes
3. Electricity from the Sun
4. Harvesting the Wind
5. Soaking up Geothermal Energy
6. Growing Fuel
7. Carbon Capture and Sequestration
8. The Nuclear Option
9. Forests
10. Soil
11. Population
12. Less is More
13. The Super Grid (I think this is the most interesting chapter -- a systematic way to distribute and conserve energy)
14. Changing the Way we Think
15. The True Cost of Carbon
16. Political Obstacles
17. The Power of Information
18. Our Choice

[bluescribbler]

19. Thanks for your excellent distillation of the authors' ideas.

I've been saying for years that the environment is the most important issue facing us. If we don't have clean air to breathe, if we don't have clean water to drink, if we don't have clean food to eat, it won't matter if Janice is getting an abortion, it won't matter if Bill wants to marry Steve, it won't matter who is the new judge on American Idol.

[nannah]

24. K&R

[indepat]

25. If only the US had used its vast resources to tackle these 12 problems rather than pursuing the RW

wet-dream of building a vast arsenal of advanced weaponry to achieve global hegemony. :shrug:

[euphorb]

26. William R. Catton books

Thank you for this excellent discussion of these four books, Time for Change. All are indeed very important and timely. I would like to recommend another book, just as important as these and more radical than them, with the possible exception of Derrick Jensen's books. The book is "Overshoot" by William R. Catton, Jr. Despite its being thirty years old (1980), it is just as timely as these four and very prescient. Catton discusses the near inevitability (as of 1980) of the end of civilization based on a deeply biological and ecological viewpoint. He published a follow-up last year, entitled "Bottleneck: Humanity's Impending Impasse," just as important, though I would highly recommend reading "Overshoot" first. Because of the passage of 30 years with virtually no meaningful action, Catton is even more pessimistic about our prospects in the second book. As a biologist, I find Catton's books extremely pertinent and convincing (he is a sociologist with a deep knowledge of human ecology). With your biology background (which I assume you have because of your career in public health), I expect you too will find these books fascinating, pertinent, and disturbing.

[GliderGuider]

32. Catton finally gave me the framework that made sense of what I was seeing.

Catton was one of a trio of books that opened my eyes. Another was "Limits to Growth" of course. The final one is a remarkable book called The Ascent of Humanity by Charles Eisenstein (it's available to read for free at the link).

I also had a two year fling with the anarcho-primitivists - mainly Jensen, John Zerzan and Daniel Quinn. There's a lot of value in their critique of how we got to where we are today, but ultimately I found them less satisfying than the holistic ecological thinkers.

[Time for change]

54. Thank you for the reference - that sounds very interesting

I'll put it on my list.

And welcome to DU :toast:

[kentuck]

27. So many people seem to believe there is nothing to learn from the past...

And that may be the only thing that can save us?

[robertpaulsen]

29. Recommended and bookmarked. Will comment tomorrow after reading.

:kick:

[bertman]

30. Another excellent post! Rec. I bought Jensen's books months ago but

put them down because they were so depressing to read--not because they were not spot on, but because I felt he was morbidly accurate.

It's not just the U.S. that is the problem. Every 'developing' nation aspires to our level of mobility and personal comfort, if not to our desire for possessions. In China, India, Mexico, Malaysia, etc. gas-burning vehicles are proliferating at a rate that is hard to comprehend. Even if mileage improves, the pollution that is being generated by the vehicles themselves, not to mention by the extraction, production, and delivery of the gas, is a Lose-Lose proposition.

The idea that we can solve this horrific problem by using "sustainable energy" seems sadly ludicrous because of the huge costs of extracting and processing and transporting the materials that are required for solar panels, geothermal systems, wind turbines, etc.

One poster on this thread mentioned that giving up lawns would not be such a big deal, but where I live even the so-called enlightened class of university professors and researchers cling to this worthless visual vestige of aristocratic display. If these individuals who are supposedly the smartest among us cannot see that their lawns are cancerous blotches on the planet's body, then how in the world will we convince the other millions of American homeowners to give up their lawns?

The only way we will make even a dent in this problem is for every consumer on every continent to agree to a more sedentary and less consumption-driven lifestyle. What are the chances of that happening?

[GliderGuider]

33. What are the chances of that happening?

The chances are not good if we try to lecture, educate or shame people into changing the way they live.

There is another approach that might have more success, though.

It involves opening people to the simple understanding that everything is connected. All life forms are connected, and all actions are connected. Every action we take has impacts far beyond ourselves, and at some level affects some or all other life on the planet. This degree of interconnection means that all other life has intrinsic value beyond its simple utility to humans.

When people get that world view, their values and their actions simply change virtually overnight. I've seen many people for whom a reduction in consumption becomes an act of respect - for themselves, for other people and for all life that shares the planet. Right Action, as the Buddhists call it, becomes inevitable when we realize that everything is connected.

[bertman]

40. I agree that the approach you advocate would be the best approach--IF we weren't

fast approaching the point of no return.

Changing the consciousness of how many BILLION people in time to make a positive and decisive impact ain't gonna happen.

People all over the planet have access to the information that is telling us how dire the circumstances are, yet rather than heed that information, they/we choose to ignore it or downplay it. Garret Hardin stated the reason quite nicely in the journal SCIENCE back in 1968: " . . . natural selection favors the forces of psychological denial. The individual benefits as an individual from his ability to deny the truth EVEN THOUGH SOCIETY AS A WHOLE, OF WHICH HE IS A PART, SUFFERS." (all caps emphasis is mine). Thanks to author Paul Greenberg (FOUR FISH The Future of The Last Wild Food) for that insightful quote..

[GliderGuider]

42. You don't need to change the consciousness of everyone.

In the same way, we didn't all need to agree that capitalism was the greatest thing since sliced bread, and everyone in Eastern Europe didn't need to agree in advance of the Fall of the Wall that the days of the Soviet empire were done, and all Americans didn't need to agree that slavery was repugnant in the 1860s.

All we need is a percent or two of influential opinion-shapers to agree on the new direction. Then the natural herding instinct that arises from our limbic brains takes over and ensures that everyone else follows along. All we need is a seed stock. BTW, the herding instinct is one psychological trait that Hardin failed to completely appreciate. It is extremely powerful at shifting behaviour, as advertisers and politicians already know. The question is how to make it equally accessible to people with ethics rather than a profit motive or power lust.

We are already at the point of no return. There is no way on God's green Earth that we can return from this point to some previous imagined idyllic antebellum state. In fact, we are always at the point of no return. We can't go back in time even a millisecond, and we can't even keep things the same. So being able to accommodate change, whether big or small, is the only reasonable approach. As more and more individuals make that conceptual leap (and it's already happening - look up Paul Hawken's book Blessed Unrest), the outcome becomes less catastrophic, even though nothing physical changes immediately.

[tama]

44. Just yourself and God/All will follow ;)

And you don't need to change yourself, just accept and realize that change is inevitable, from each moment of consciousness to another. Be open to change and cherish it, heart wide open.

[GliderGuider]

45. :-)

Yes.

[bertman]

47. I don't disagree with what you're saying COULD happen, but I think

the forces arrayed against that scenario are pushing equally hard in the other direction. Maybe harder.

Namaste.

[GliderGuider]

48. What do we have to lose by trying?

And what do we have to lose by NOT trying?

[bertman]

50. We have nothing to lose by trying. But just trying could be woefully inadequate

for the task at hand.

I, for one, am changing my way of living to try to reflect my belief that less consumption, less travel, less energy usage, and more awareness can make a difference. But I'm not naive enough to think that a few million of us doing that can reverse the way we human beings have been acting for millenia.

We have no choice but to accept the change that comes. But opening my heart and embracing it isn't something I'm prepared to do in lieu of actually taking concrete action.

[GliderGuider]

56. I look on opening my heart as taking concrete action.

Doing that lets me see what changes to my material circumstances might be most effective.

I have also stopped thinking of what we're trying to do here as "reversing" the way humans act. Humans have always acted in both positive and negative ways. I think of what I'm doing as simply changing my awareness so that it's easier to choose to move away from negative actions and embrace positive ones. I don't want to save the world, I just want to leave it a better place than I fount it, in some small way. It's all I can do, and in the end it's enough.

[tavalon]

94. We will have to accept it and I for one will not likely accept it with the kindness I ought

But being ready for what is next is really important to me. I don't like being blindsided.

[tavalon]

92. We are past the point of no return

but this persons approach is still a good one, not to save us, but because it is right action. That is why I do all the things I do to conserve. I do it out of politeness to Gaia and her other inhabitants. I am so remorseful that we are taking so much out with us, I do it as atonement, which if we take the word apart it has within in at one as in one with the world. When I get into the goal oriented "fix it" mentality, I tend to want to throw up my hands because it is so obvious that I don't make a difference, but as the OP said so eloquently, if we each do our part, maybe it will help, and right back to the beginning, even if it doesn't help, it's the right action.

[Time for change]

55. Thank you bertman -- I think it will take a combination of many things

Your idea that we need to consume a lot less is spot on -- and McKibben talks about that in as productive a manner as I've read.

I think you're too pessimistic about the use of renewable energy resources. They probably can't solve the problem alone, but they are certainly a big component, and we are making progress in learning to develop more practical ways of using them. Gore's book, "Our Choice" is a very good reference for that. We have the technology to do a MUCH better job than we are doing, even right now.

But the political barriers are huge -- specifically the fact that we have some very powerful people who are much more interested in continuing the status quo than they are in trying to save the planet. For example, we have corporations like Exxon-Mobile who spend multi millions on fraudulent propaganda telling us that there is no problem, rather than doing anything to address the problem, meanwhile racking up hundreds of billions for themselves.

[bertman]

78. I've read McKibben and others who are strong advocates of the renewable energy

approach. I agree with it, but I also see that it's another technological 'fix' that will take decades to develop and that has its own HUGE embedded energy costs as well as its own industrial pollution costs.

One of the reasons I am so negative toward the renewable energy solutions is that I'm a green builder and have experienced first-hand the huge emphasis that is on high tech products as solutions to our problems. It's all about manufacturing and sales. Manufacturing and sales are the end result of extraction (mining, drilling, etc), transportation over great distances, industrial fabrication (with all of its associated pollution and massive use of energy), and distribution (think petrochemical fuels transporting all of these products to markets all over the U.S. and the world once they are produced.

One of the most immediate and effective measures we can all take is to simply change the amount of energy we use at home and at work. Lowering one's thermostat to 65° and wearing sweaters instead of t-shirts in the house is an easy change that simply requires a different mindset. Switching off lights and appliances when not in operation is easy. Changing to fluorescent bulbs instead of incandescent bulbs. Composting instead of throwing organic matter in a plastic bag to be hauled by truck to a landfill where bulldozers will plow it under. Using quilted shades instead of relying solely on insulated glass.

Do we ever hear about these easy-to-do steps? Rarely if ever. Why? Because it reduces CONSUMPTION and affects the corporate bottom line.

The other reason for my negativity is that I see how woefully ignorant and short-sighted we humans (not just Americans) choose to be. We have been trained to reach for the technological solution because that is where the corporate money wants us to reach. But our tiny brains cannot seem to grasp that there are other options available if we just seek them out.

You're right that the Exxon-Mobile's of the world are fighting any changes tooth and nail. Meanwhile, the Halliburtons, Kellogg, Brown, and Roots are licking their chops as they salivate over the megaTRILLIONS of dollars of engineering that will be required to deal with the environmental catastrophes that are bearing down on us. There's money to be made by anyone who is intent upon making money off of disaster capitalism. Rolling Stone Magazine featured an article about the massive international investment dollars being spent on buying up millions of acres of arable land that is in places that have been designated as least likely to suffer from the climate change we are going through. Those lands will be used to grow crops to sell to the desperate BILLIONS of residents of Planet Terra who are unfortunate enough to live where food can no longer be grown.

As always, the bloodsuckers are there waiting to bite the necks of the unsuspecting.

If you have not already read "Cradle to Cradle" by William McDonough and Michael Braungart, I suggest it as a primer on how we SHOULD be conducting our manufacturing processes in a world that is truly trying to be sustainable.

[Time for change]

102. I certainly agree that energy conservation should be a major part of our efforts

I'd be interested to know what you think of Al Gore's book, "Our Choice", which I reference in this post. It does talk a lot about technological solutions, but it also covers almost everything else, and is very heavy on energy conservation. He goes into much detail on the pros and cons of every approach he describes -- It seems to me like a very balanced book, though I don't have the expertise to evaluate all the technological stuff. As I said in the OP, it's difficult to read because of the level and amount of technological detail. But maybe with your background you'll find it a lot easier to read than I did.

I'll put Cradle to Cradle on my list.

[bertman]

105. I will definitely get a copy of "Our Choice" and read it. Soon. It sounds like

a good one, especially if it's heavy on the conservation ethic. Thanks for reminding me of that one.

[Time for change]

107. Great. I'll be interested to hear what you think about it.

You might want to consider doing an OP on it if you think warranted.

[LWolf]

37. That's an intriguing list.

I haven't read any of them, but I'm happy to put them on my reading list.

[Liberal_in_LA]

38. great reviews. thanks

[pretzel4gore]

46. a certain demographic has been turned away from its best interest

w/out being too crude, let's just put forth the reality that white men, the most powerful demographic on earth, have been enslaved by rightwing propagandists. Remember, I'm white, but I'm also a leftist- and leftwingers cannot by definition, be 'white' in the way Mister Pig has ordained. To be a 'white man' is to be a narrow minded reactionary rightwinger devoted to fattening up the biggest pig on earth. Yall know who that is. He's the goof who destroys his own, wraps himself in the flag and glorifies in brute force (spending more then rest of humanity COMBINED to establish military superiority) Mister pig uses everything, anything to promote the cause of gluttony and privileged greed- he exploits enviromentalism to enrage people about 'eco taxes' he exploits anger over animal suffering to demonise those who work in the food, transport, business...even trappers in the far north! By politicising EVERYTHING the white men do, by constantly attacking men who grew up in business and maybe working outdoors, Mister Pig has made white men conscious they HAVE NO CHOICE but to always support the maverick, the pro war, pro big business, pro waste creating lifestyles, the platforms of rightwing politicians. Hitler ran as an 'outsider' and so did reagan, bush senior, junyer, macain and all the rest of the nazipoohs since olden days. Rush limbah-Humbug is part of a persecuted minority! As is glenbeck, bloworeilly, anus coulter, foxnews, cnn, abc, nbc and the kkk! allvoices crying in the wildernesses! Only the white male can legally, and publicly, suffer racists assaults. And with a black man (actually, he's really Irish!) Barrick O'Bama in the WHouse, it's almost obscene how neatly Mister Pig has fixed the game and ponzi schemed the results! The problem is, of course, most 'white men' are too closely linked to the women in their lives, and the kids, and their neighbors regardless of colour, and to their country, which is getting crushed by Mister pig and his too crafty schemes! But there's nothing a guy can do (otherwise, he loses his white racial privilege...he become a pinko!)
unless SOMEONE CAN cut through the Gordian knot of white male isolation from the rest of humanity, and soon, goddammit, then the earth will peter out, like a drunkard freezing to death outside his locked and running car...

[qazplm]

51. human civilization will not collapse

it will change.

I think ascribing evil motives to corporations instead of simply greedy motives overlooks one thing. At some point, those corporations will change to other forms of energy out of necessity. Money will flow into green technology not because of altruistic motives but because that's where the money will be. The first corporation to dominate green tech in a post-oil world will be immensely rich, so they all will go there when it ceases to be profitable to use oil.

I think at the end of the day, a consumer society like we have now makes more money/profit for corporations than the more dire pictures painted by some of those authors of slave labor and closed cities.
So I don't believe corps are in any way moral. I do believe they prefer the most profitable situation and that generally involves a large number of people able to buy their stuff.

[Time for change]

Many of the people involved in knowingly spreading false propaganda to the effect that

climate change is no big problem or that it isn't man-made recognize that they probably won't be around for the worst of this crisis. They're focused on expanding their wealth and power, and they don't give a damn how much they have to lie, or what happens to humanity as a result. I didn't use the word evil in this post. Call it greed, call it whatever you want.

As far as human civilization "changing" as you put it, vs. human civilization as we know it "collapsing" as I put it, what is the difference. If the "change" is catastrophic and likely to result in the loss of hundreds of millions or billions of lives, hundreds of millions of refugees, etc., what is the difference?

[euphorb]

64. alternative energy sources will not save civilization

Certainly, corporations will seek to develop alternative energy sources, and that should be done. However, it is well established and documented that alternative sources will not come even close to replacing the energy and the physical power provided by oil. There are several reasons -- one is that oil was built up by geological processes over many millions of years, whereas alternative sources (other than the highly problematical nuclear sources) depend on CURRENT energy input form the sun (in the form of sunlight, wind, biofuels, etc.). Current energy input simply cannot replace the vast of amount of energy available from oil -- we have used half of the energy stored over millions of years in the form of oil just in the last 125 years, for example. Secondly, to ramp up alternative sources to needed amounts, even were that possible, would require far more energy than is available (i.e., from oil) and would divert it from other uses to which it is already being put. An adequate base of biofuels would require the diversion of vast amounts of arable land that is needed to feed the population of the world -- it cannot be diverted to biofuels in sufficient quantity without resulting in mass starvation. Furthermore, alternative sources might be useful in creating electricity and other locally used energy needs, but nothing can replace oil ion anything like the scale necessary to provide motive power for transportation -- yes, there can be some electric cars, but they cannot replace the transportation power that is currently fueled by oil -- trains, airplanes, massive fleets of trucks, etc.

Finally, even aside from its use for energy, oil is the basic raw material for so much of the products used in civilization, such as plastics, pharmaceuticals, fabrics, and much more. Without oil, all of that would disappear. All this is based on the established fact that usable oil will run out in the very near future. It doesn't even begin to address the wholesale environmental destruction of the earth and its ability to support life -- climate change, but much more besides.

Too many people see the development of alternative sources as a panacea -- unfortunately, that will not happen. The twin disasters of oil depletion and climate change do indeed bode the end of civilization as we know it.

[glitch]

76. alone.

But it can contribute and why the hell not pursue it?

[glitch]

75. Just out of curiousity, what makes you think greed isn't evil?

Dante found it sufficient for its own ring of Hell.

Sure it's a sickness, but what evil isn't? How do you differentiate?

[leveymg]

52. One of the best reviews of the subject I've seen, Outstanding post!

I read Diamond's book nearly a decade ago, and sad to say, all the patterns and markers of imminent collapse he describes are coming true at a startlingly fast pace. I'll qualify that by saying the collapse we are seeing applies to the U.S., but much of Asia is undergoing rapid development, which I don't see as either short-lived or entirely sustainable over a longer period. That said, the collapse isn't really global, but our national fall looks to be frighteningly steep, in the near term, like the fall of the Soviet Union.

Will use you valuable compendium as a guide to further research. Thank you!

[BOG PERSON]

61. thanks. it makes me feel a lot better about wasting my short life to know

that i couldn't have done anything worthwhile with it, even if i wanted to, because planet earth is doomed.

[certainot]

67. there's a simpler explanation for why human civilizations

destroy themselves and why we tend toward authoritarianism....

humans evolved in a natural environment with no certainty. things were fine until 'civilization' and larger populations required humans to delay the age of reproduction. the later the acceptable age of marriage, the more the masturbation. that's when sex on the wrong brain started getting bad.

by default masturbation happened with the tool and hammer hand, the right hand. the more repressive the culture/religion the more masturbating went on. unfortunately the right hand is connected to the left logical /mathematical side of the brain where sex energy is satisfied in terms of certitude and magnitude (greed). the left hand is the hand connected to the creative orgasmic side of the brain. hence the conservative mind, in which studies show a common need to avoid uncertainty (need certainty). uncertainty causes fear in proportion to the need for certainty and since there is no certainty it must be created- hence more organized religion and all the denial of reality that comes with it. the amygdala actually reacts to uncertaity and fear and evolved as a half-way station or distribution depot for excess sex energy so that it can be stored and injected as needed into the creative right side to make up and rationalize the denial of reality that is needed to create certainty in a natural environment and reduce the fear. the pleasure centers get some of that energy at the same time and that's the pleasure that absolute certainty brings, even when completely fucking wrong.

Here's the short version:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HnrfuTUlqVs

Here's a more detailed version:
http://sexonthewwrongbrain.org

[Time for change]

72. Ah!

So that's why Christine O'Donnell went on a crusad against mastrubation! :)

[muriel_volestrangler]

83. That's got to be the weirdest reply to a serious thread I've ever seen on DU

Thank you for setting a new record. I think.

[certainot]

100. i'll take that as a badge of honor nt

[Codeine]

93. that is easily the stupidest fucking thing I've ever read,

and I read The Dungeon, fergawdsake.

[certainot]

101. yeah sure, that's what they told gallileo!

[tavalon]

68. Wow, I thought I was spending a good bit of time dwelling on this!

You've got me beat. The thing that bugs me is that individuals making individual choices (I shop only thrift stores, carpool, ride buses, etc.) will not get any pass at all. But really, I do those things because they are part of my personal morality, not because I think I can save anything. I got over that quite a while ago. My best hope and yours is to be ready to retrieve the oxygen mask and then assist our children. The unimaginable you mention in your last sentence is already underway and many you just quoted can and are imagining it just fine.

We've gone beyond the if to the how and when of it all. Hubbard's Peak flashed by with barely a squeak.

[Time for change]

70. I think that the good majority of us make individual choices on the basis that we think it's the

right thing to do, not because we think that individually we will make a difference. I never went to vote in a presidential election thinking that my vote would make the difference, and I'll bet you didn't either. But when we all make individual decisions like that, things happen.

[tavalon]

91. True and true.

Yeah, I still fight for this country even though I have my doubts about her salvageability, but if not that, then what? OTOH, I am preparing for something much bigger than the Old US of A, so there's that.

I'm going to read Eaarth. Thanks for the reviews.

[Bluenorthwest]

87. All that talk of oxygen masks makes me think of From The Air

by Laurie Anderson.

Good evening.
This is your Captain.
We are about to attempt a crash landing.
Please extinguish all cigarettes.
Place your tray tables in their upright, locked position.
Your Captain says: Put your head on your knees. Your Captain says: Put your head on your hands. Captain says: Put your hands on your head.
Put your hands on your hips.
Heh heh.
This is your Captain-and we are going down.
We are all going down, together.

This is the time.
And this is the record of the time.
Uh-this is your Captain again.
You know, I've got a funny feeling
I've seen this all before.
Why?
Cause I'm a caveman.
Why?
Cause I've got eyes in the back of my head.
Why?
It's the heat.
Standby.
This is the time.
And this is the record of the time.
This is the time.
And this is the record of the time.
Put your hands over your eyes.
Jump out of the plane.
There is no pilot.
You are not alone.
Standby.
This is the time.
And this is the
record of the time.

[tavalon]

90. You know, I can't figure out why I've never been a fan

I love those lyrics.

Thank you.

[Bluenorthwest]

109. Her lyrics seem different when read from the page

She is one of my all time favorite artists. My current favorite is 'Only An Expert' http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uIT5X46aJc

[FirstLight]

73. Adding to my booklist as well.. bookmarked for more research too

I just got myself a copy of An Inconvenient Truth in book form for Christmas. The thing that pisses me off to no end as I read it, is how moved I was by the movie, how many of us ALL who were affected by this information on a gut level. we know it is truth.

it was published in 2006.
Are we any better off..? Have we done a damn thing? ...makes me want to scream, but at who?


This year my main goal is to get my non-profit community building project launched. Developing neighborhood permaculture, and teaching neighbors of different backgrounds how to communicate well enough to be a tribe of sorts...these are the things that will sustain. Practise makes perfect, and I can really only affect my own backyard.

The behemoths of govt and corporate greed are instoppable, I wonder what will finally take them down. In the meantime, trying to learn enough to thrive without infrastructure seems to be the way to go.

[Raksha]

74. K & R, and bookmarked to read later.

Even though I read it through once already, along with most of the replies.

[Catherina]

77. Bookmarked. Thank you. Have Jensen. Ordering the other 3 now. n/t

[puebloknot]

79. Can't rec? Rec'ing anyway. Read "Collapse," just bought ...

Rifkin, and planning to buy Eaarth.

"The impossible will take a little while." We should try alternative energy. Nay-sayers are like those who say "the aliens can't get to us based on *our physics*." Who knows what ideas lurk in the minds of young people, just longing to be tried out?

[defendandprotect]

81. Re "rec" ... I'm noticing that about 20% of OP's are in "too late" status ...

when I get to them -- !! That's a lot --

I'm coming upon posts I think should be "rec'd" too late, too often.

Often I'm asking, "where has this thread been"?

Yet -- I think I'm average or maybe even higher than average at reading posts here?

Think we need more time to "rec" posts ...

???

[tavalon]

95. The noise ratio can be a problem

[puebloknot]

97. Indeed, we do need more time to rec posts. Stuff of this quality ...

... should not get hidden quickly.

[Time for change]

104. It's good to hear of people buying these books

Hope you like them and find them valuable. :toast:

[defendandprotect]

80. Agree on this verdict ... mainly because of Global Warming, but also ....

because of capitalism and its war on nature --

I don't think our society is as much "failing" as being pushed off a cliff by capitalism.

It's set the stage for most of our violent history, imo.

Nor does "Energy depletion" concern me as much as my guess that we've had 50-60 years of

energy alternatives being suppressed by those who control our natural resources.

No one knows how Global Warming will compound -- scientists continue to be shocked at the pace --

however, unless we do something immediately to convert gas driven cars to electric/solar --

and to end capitalism and its exploitation of nature, little will change.


Re Water -- business uses 80% of our water -- probably more -- and yet we have the insanity of

private interests trying to own and control water.

We are suffering Capitalistic fascism --

We didn't start "too late" -- rather elite/corporate propaganda over the past 50 and more years

has created a public too confused to actually weigh and understand the consequences of GW.

Where patriarchy begins so does violence versus nature --

Patriarchy and violence are mirror images of one another --

We're also attempting to discuss "solutions" when we have no idea of what solutions have been

suppressed. When corporate-press ensures that there is no discussion of Global Warming --

when most political discussion by the parties shies away from discusssions of Global Warming --

what can the public possibly know of valid information and how can the public begin to

recognize the urgency and decide for themselves on a response?

Society doesn't favor corporate domination -- it is under corporate domination because dishonest

men among us have sold themselves and our government to elites.

We need to be talking about solar run computers -- IF we want to keep discussing these issues.

Anyone paying attention to weather conditions -- increasing numbers and severity of weather from

hurricanes to tornadoes -- will also note that we are no longer responding to these conditions

as "emergencies." Two possible reasons are shortages of money and resources at state levels

and/or a disinterest on the part of corporate government in saving citizens. Let me leave that

question to those who watched "Katrina" unfold and let each decide on the answer.

Do we really still expect capitalist/elites to react to save human health and well-being, when

full well know their so efficient attacks on our air, water, soil, animal-life over a 100 years

and more?

Capitalism is suicidal -- that's very difficult for many to understand, but it's true.

Exploitation of nature guarantees not only its destruction, but ours. We are all part of nature.



Patriarchy -- and its underpinning =

Organized patriarchal religion -- and its economic system =

Capitalism =

The Unholy Trinity




Just as a PS on this --

About once a week I take a little tour of the TV stations and what they are showing --

Can anyone deny that steadily youth are being shown a more insane and violent world?

Do we really think these images don't impact the health and mental stability of children?

Put the TVs in the closet -- disconnect from the message.

[Number_Six]

82. Add Joseph Tainter to your reading list

Killer book, Dr. Tainter laid this one out years ago: "The Collapse of Complex Societies." (1988)

His take is that as nation-empires grow too big, the citizens drive themselves crazy attempting to solve obvious problems by throwing resources, time and humans at them, and often, these create even more headaches, which waste time, resources, and in the end, you hit a point where the returns are not equal to energy input.

And yes, worth a read, sir.

[muriel_volestrangler]

84. To correct something Jensen claimed: the US military does *not* use more than 50% of the US oil use

It's a secret just how much oil the US military uses, but estimates range from around 400,000 barrels a day in peacetime – almost as much as Greece – to 800,000 barrels a day at the height of the Iraq war.This puts a single nation's armed forces near Australia as an oil consumer and among the top 25 countries in the world today.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/cif-green/2010/oct/28/oil-us-military-biofuels

https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/rankorder/2174rank.html?countryName=United%20States&countryCode=us®ionCode=na&rank=1#us

US use in 2009: 18,690,000 barrels per day

So it's perhaps 4% of the US consumption. In some ways, that's a pity, because if you could cut the US use of oil by 25% just by halving the activity of the US military, that would be the quickest fix to the world's environmental problems that anyone has ever come up with. But the 50% figure was ridiculous. I hope Jensen doesn't rely on figures in his arguments, or that he takes a bit more care with them normally.

[Time for change]

106. Thanks for that correction

I think that Jensen has a lot of important things to say, but I do take him with a grain of salt. He does rely on insight more than data, but I believe that much of his insight is spot on.

His father severely abused and raped him when he was a child. He alludes to that frequently in his book, which obviously colors many of his ideas.

The thing that most causes me to be ambivalent about some of his ideas is that he often talks as if he believes that mountains and trees are sentient beings. I love out-of-the-box thinking, but Jensen sometimes goes too far out of the box even for me.

[lunatica]

86. Thank you.

[Duer 157099]

98. Kick! n/t

[robertpaulsen]

99. This quote and this concept guide my prescription for a collapsing civilization.

Thank you for providing so much food for thought, Time for change. The only book on your list that I have read is Collapse by Jared Diamond. I seem to recall that hand in hand with environmental degradation was currency devaluation as one of the primary causes he confirmed for past human civilization collapses. Certainly we can see the writing on the wall within the last few years on that count. With that in mind, this quote guides my vision for a sustainable future:

http://www.theleftcoaster.com/archives/008249.php">"Until you change the way money works, you change nothing".

Our economy, both in the infrastructure and in the nature of money itself, is predicated on infinite growth. The end result of this occurring on a global scale has been a currency based on nothing more than debt itself, and an environment that is literally slow boiling humanity to death. I encapsulated the concept last year in a blog entry this way:

http://americanjudas.blogspot.com/2010/02/primal-forces-of-nature-vs-real-primal.html">The disease is the Infinite Growth paradigm. This disease afflicts all operating economic systems in the world today; capitalism, socialism and communism all operate within this paradigm. Why do I consider it a disease? Well, let's take this "one holistic system of systems" at it's word. What do you call "primal forces of nature" that attempt to grow infinitely within a finite organic system? I call it cancer!

I don't believe there is a solution to avoid collapse, I believe collapse is inevitable. But there are options to mitigate the worst possibilities. We're not going to have the Mad Max scenario that Jensen seems to paint on a global scale, but there may be some localities where that is more likely to occur. (The phrase "The South Will Rise Again" really makes me shudder) The bottom line is that after Global Capitalism has been buried, Re-Localization will be key in the creation of stable economies. It should be up to the local (hopefully) elected leaders as to whether that sustainability is maintained through a market-based, socialized or some other hybrid derived economic arrangement. But I believe the key in the future is that we must have economies predicated on sustainability, not infinite growth. That means our money is no longer tied to wealth creation but is representative of energy, both the human energy we produce and the planet's energy that we utilize. I don't have a crystal ball to detail what monetary measurement would be used to calculate this, but if humanity can agree to the general concept, we might have a chance at a civilized survival where we can iron out the specifics when necessary.

[Time for change]

103. Interesting - I don't believe I've heard that before

that the way we use money is predicated on infinite growth. I always thought of money as being primarily a convenient way to facilitate trade.

So much I don't know about it. And I guess that applies to the good majority of Americans - which I suppose is the reason that Wall Street was able to steal so much money from us.

I'll have to think more about this concept, thank you.

[robertpaulsen]

108. Dennis Kucinich is one of the few in DC who get it.

Money is predicated on infinite growth on many levels. One level that Dennis Kucinich has addressed recently through pending legislation is fractional reserve banking. Basically, this is the concept that when banks loan money, they are allowed to loan out at a rate higher than the actual deposits they have in reserve. They literally create money out of nothing by artificially expanding the money supply beyond what it would normally be. That fraction could be as high as 8 or 9 dollars loaned out for every 1 dollar they have in reserve. That's a remarkable engine for infinite growth, as long as you have the natural resources to back it up. That's the crises we face with the Global Warming/Peak Oil predicament. http://journals.democraticunderground.com/robertpaulsen/44|Dennis Kucinich is well aware of both problems>.

On December 17, Kucinich took a step towards a remedy with the http://moneyreform.wordpress.com/2010/12/18/kucinich-proposes-landmark-reform-of-monetary-policy/">National Emergency Employment Defense Act of 2010. To quote from the link, "The National Emergency Employment Defense Act of 2010 would allow the federal government to directly fund badly-needed infrastructure repairs and fund education systems nationwide by spending money into circulation without increasing the national debt. The bill would end the current practice of fractional reserve lending, whereby the economy depends upon private financial institutions to lend money into circulation."

There was a good http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=439&topic_id=48597">DU thread on the subject. I hope it gets some traction in Congress, though my sense of hope has been dulled, to say the least, where the House is concerned.

[rtassi]

110. "Our Choice" ..

When the DVD "An Inconvenient truth" first came out I bought 100 copies to give away as a promo item to people booking cruises on our Schooner. I wrote a piece about it in our news letter. I was shocked at the number of people I angered with that gesture. I know we lost some business. This summer early, I received a copy of "Our Choice" in the mail anonymously. I was pleased and curious, but didn't feel as if I needed to read this book. Its been sitting on my desk since June ... I can see that it is time again to absorb this ... Still don't know who sent it ... thank you once again TFC
rt