The answer is explained in detail in the post. I addressed “the transition is less bad than climate” and what my solutions are. The first step is accepting that our way of life is not sustainable. rather than trying to perpetuate it, try to stop it.
Interesting. The issue I have is providing solutions when people believe we can keep all of this modernity. Until they understand this isn’t physically or politically possible, they can’t accept new ideas.
Collapse isn’t an event… it is a process that is happening right now. That’s why I talk about it. We aren’t going to solve the climate crisis nor people’s thirst for energy.
I'm just not living in a fantasy land. Things have never been as bad for the ecology as they are right now and they are trending to get worse. The United States has never produced more fossil fuels that right now. Same thing for the world. Facing the reality is challenging for people who want to continue to believe we can just keep doing what we've always done, but with some sort of magical "renewable" energy source. We aren't going to "fix" our democracy either. Don't be naive. The people with the money and the power want to keep their money and power, and they make the laws. If you want to maintain hope in a hopeless situation, doing the same thing over and over again expecting a different result, go for it. The purpose of my work is to persuade people to think outside that box that the ruling class would love to keep you inside of. Bottom line... don't have hope in hopeless things. I have plenty of hope and imagination, but they are in things that are worthy of the same.
That would be fascinating to know. I have thoughts, trying to think how to articulate them. I think one way or another, seeing some injustice at a young age, or seeing the importance of justice for victims as something connected to this. Then simply being exposed to the mountain of evidence that the entire planet is a victim of industrial civilization.
A parent leaving an abusive spouse for example. The parent leaving (especially for women and especially some time ago) is likely going to be its own hell. The income hit can be severe. But leaving the abuse is still better.
I've reached the conclusion that our political systems are one of the very last places to look to for any type of 'positive' response to our predicament of ecological overshoot and its symptom predicaments (e.g., sink overloading, resource depletion, etc.).
As they often (always?) do, the ruling caste of society (the political system being one component of this group of world decision-makers and influencers) has leveraged a 'crisis' in order to meet their primary goal: maintain/expand the wealth-generation/-extraction systems that provide their revenue streams.
'Renewables', along with the notions of 'electrifying everything' and 'net zero', are part and parcel of this strategy. They are designed to reduce cognitive dissonance as well as market/sell more industrial products and, more importantly, keep the golden goose of perpetual growth stumbling along for another quarter or two. It also happens to result in their ability to siphon more and more wealth towards the advantaged few while the disadvantaged many bear the burden of their misguided/misinformed actions.
If our 'leaders' were truly intent upon mitigating the inevitable consequences of overshoot, they would be advocating a cessation of economic growth. In fact, if they were truly interested in the welfare of all, and aware of the physics and biology of ecological overshoot and the dire predicament we are all caught in, they would be attempting to reverse growth, focus our limited and quickly diminishing resources on relocalising as much as possible, and decommissioning all those dangerous complexities we've scattered across the globe (e.g., nuclear power plants, chemical production/storage facilities, biosafety labs, etc.).
Instead, they are doubling and tripling down on the very processes that have led us into overshoot by selling us narratives that more complex technology and economic growth will 'solve' our dilemma. Their actions/decisions are ensuring the collapse that always accompanies overshoot will be even more monumental in its scope and impact, perhaps to the point that there will never be another complex society arising from the ashes of this last, desperate experiment of those story-telling, tool-using apes whose 'success' guaranteed its global demise.
The answer is explained in detail in the post. I addressed “the transition is less bad than climate” and what my solutions are. The first step is accepting that our way of life is not sustainable. rather than trying to perpetuate it, try to stop it.
Interesting. The issue I have is providing solutions when people believe we can keep all of this modernity. Until they understand this isn’t physically or politically possible, they can’t accept new ideas.
Collapse isn’t an event… it is a process that is happening right now. That’s why I talk about it. We aren’t going to solve the climate crisis nor people’s thirst for energy.
I'm just not living in a fantasy land. Things have never been as bad for the ecology as they are right now and they are trending to get worse. The United States has never produced more fossil fuels that right now. Same thing for the world. Facing the reality is challenging for people who want to continue to believe we can just keep doing what we've always done, but with some sort of magical "renewable" energy source. We aren't going to "fix" our democracy either. Don't be naive. The people with the money and the power want to keep their money and power, and they make the laws. If you want to maintain hope in a hopeless situation, doing the same thing over and over again expecting a different result, go for it. The purpose of my work is to persuade people to think outside that box that the ruling class would love to keep you inside of. Bottom line... don't have hope in hopeless things. I have plenty of hope and imagination, but they are in things that are worthy of the same.
That would be fascinating to know. I have thoughts, trying to think how to articulate them. I think one way or another, seeing some injustice at a young age, or seeing the importance of justice for victims as something connected to this. Then simply being exposed to the mountain of evidence that the entire planet is a victim of industrial civilization.
A parent leaving an abusive spouse for example. The parent leaving (especially for women and especially some time ago) is likely going to be its own hell. The income hit can be severe. But leaving the abuse is still better.
I've reached the conclusion that our political systems are one of the very last places to look to for any type of 'positive' response to our predicament of ecological overshoot and its symptom predicaments (e.g., sink overloading, resource depletion, etc.).
As they often (always?) do, the ruling caste of society (the political system being one component of this group of world decision-makers and influencers) has leveraged a 'crisis' in order to meet their primary goal: maintain/expand the wealth-generation/-extraction systems that provide their revenue streams.
'Renewables', along with the notions of 'electrifying everything' and 'net zero', are part and parcel of this strategy. They are designed to reduce cognitive dissonance as well as market/sell more industrial products and, more importantly, keep the golden goose of perpetual growth stumbling along for another quarter or two. It also happens to result in their ability to siphon more and more wealth towards the advantaged few while the disadvantaged many bear the burden of their misguided/misinformed actions.
If our 'leaders' were truly intent upon mitigating the inevitable consequences of overshoot, they would be advocating a cessation of economic growth. In fact, if they were truly interested in the welfare of all, and aware of the physics and biology of ecological overshoot and the dire predicament we are all caught in, they would be attempting to reverse growth, focus our limited and quickly diminishing resources on relocalising as much as possible, and decommissioning all those dangerous complexities we've scattered across the globe (e.g., nuclear power plants, chemical production/storage facilities, biosafety labs, etc.).
Instead, they are doubling and tripling down on the very processes that have led us into overshoot by selling us narratives that more complex technology and economic growth will 'solve' our dilemma. Their actions/decisions are ensuring the collapse that always accompanies overshoot will be even more monumental in its scope and impact, perhaps to the point that there will never be another complex society arising from the ashes of this last, desperate experiment of those story-telling, tool-using apes whose 'success' guaranteed its global demise.
Agreed. Great articulation of the reality.
Well said, Justin.