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Pingback: By Respect Silence: Why “Saving the Planet” is a Misleading, Lost Cause – un-Denial
Well, this is one of those rare occasions when I just have to absolutely agree. I would say just two things: (1) Continued population growth causes human poverty. (2) Aggressive war can be expected when an affluent nation, with growing population, perceives future shortages.
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Of course I agree with your points also. One of the toughest tasks is explaining to people that it’s wise to be pessimistic when the evidence warrants it. Most are too afraid to seem like downers, so they stick with optimistic narratives and don’t learn from history. They lack moral courage, e.g. the “bystander effect.”
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This could be a less wordy version of the Dark Mountain Manifesto and lots of people have concluded the same things independently. Heck, it was known by the 1800’s that man was runaway train.
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An excellent article. You might to join a facebook group called “Join the Degrowth Revolution (JTDR)” or if you just want to see what it’s about without joining then try the FB page “Degrowth – it’s urgent?
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Pingback: Why “Saving the Planet” is a Misleading, Lost Cause | Damn the Matrix
wow, finally commentators that stick to the article. This article seems to sum up the physical reality ” on the ground ” fairly well. Could there be a reason for the path traveled? Are we also not children of the universe? Personally I think that we could have overcome greed and avarice, but it looks like we have passed the tipping point of ignorance.
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It’s refreshing to read something so bluntly truthful…thanks for the clarity and honesty. There’s that famous line uttered by Jack Nicholson in A Few Good Men “You can’t handle the truth!” which sadly describes the mental/emotional state of at least 99% of humans. I think it was Krishnamurti who said something to the effect of “There’s ample evidence that humans are a dangerously insane species”. Perhaps we should rename our species Homo Unsapiens! As one commenter noted, our trajectory has been known by a handful of critical thinkers since the 19th century which brings to mind my favorite quote from that noted optimist Franz Kafka: “There’s plenty of hope. Just not for us.”
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As you must know, blogs like this represent a small fraction of public thought and it’s not likely to change until the next resource price shock happens. From other species’ point of view, economic recessions are the only real reprieve from destruction. A politician or business leader who mentions that will be shunned as a pessimist.
But when over-hyped U.S. shale oil & gas production plays out, we could have a final reality-check and living small may become permanently popular. Predicting the year it will happen can spoil reputations (e.g. Jeff Rubin) but pre-2030 is a good guess. It will probably happen with minimal warning and be analyzed in detail afterward.
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I noticed the following statement in the above article. “… with nature as a mere backdrop for their scarce leisure time.” When I’ve camped at developed campgrounds I often notice that some campsites are essentially party sites. They consist of folks who seem to be far more interested in hanging with friends then in being in communion with nature. For many of them the awesomeness of nature seems to be pretty much invisible.
For most of the still rapidly growing 7.6 billion of our species the concept, that a diverse healthy ecosystem is an essential foundation of our life support system, seems alien to them.
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Very true, and the crassness is getting worse with technology. Compact Bluetooth speakers put ghetto beats in remote locations, and one of the worst developments is loud marine stereos heard for over a mile on flat water. They let cretins get away with it on lakes we thought were sacred.
Extreme sports use scenic cliffs as goals and takeoff points. Places like Everest and the Rubicon Trail have big human waste problems, all in the name of recreation.
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Stop breeding!
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The facebook feed regularly gets filled with pro environment ‘news’ items. All you have to do is like and share and you’ve done your good deed for the day. Now return to consuming.
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“This ability worked with reasonable balance until fossil fuels, technology and consumerism turned us from survivors into destroyers.” If it makes you feel any better, from my perspective this is not quite accurate. The balance of power shifted from nature to man when humanity discovered how to use fire. It enabled us to leave our natural niche and expand into terrain where we never could have otherwise survived. Use of fire enabled us to cook food and use all that caloric energy to grow our brains, and develop technology. It enabled us to eliminate predation that would have kept out population in check, and also, to burn down forests and maintain savannas more conducive to hunting. In this process we began driving dozens of megafaunal species to extinction within short time frames whenever we arrived at a new island or continent. Fossil fuels – and Haber-Bausch – exacerbated the trends tremendously, but the innate behavior – survivors turning into destroyers – has been in place for hundreds of thousands of years.
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That line has since been refined but we’re not in disagreement about fire as an early factor. Fossil fuels (“extreme fire”) are the main driver of exponential growth, as can be seen in population graphs (with a degree of time lag). Switching locomotives from wood to coal was no small change, for example. Then diesel provided even more power. Without cheap bunker fuel (major source of pollution) giant cargo ships couldn’t function, and so on.
RE population growth, modern agriculture comes down to Land + Water + Oil (machines & fertilizer) = Food. Once oil peaks we’ll slide back to an older agrarian scale after much fighting and misdirected blame. The fantasy of “renewables” replacing the very thing they’re built with is a big theme here.
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