44 thoughts on “Not Just California – the Water Crisis is Here, Now”
Nothing in these videos comes close to acknowledging the utterly catastrophic nature of the nascent global state shift or the ongoing mass extinction event.
The human race, along with all the rest of Life on Earth, is in very serious trouble and we spend our time discussing how to treat the symptoms of the disease that is killing the planet rather than trying to eliminate the disease itself.
A disease is not cured by putting band-aids on the symptoms. To be rid of the disease, the source must be eradicated. The source of the disease that’s killing our Mother is the psychopathic, dominator culture of industrial civilisation. The end of that civilisation is absolutely essential to the continuation of human Life on Earth.
“Human beings will be happier – not when they cure cancer or get to Mars or eliminate racial prejudice or flush Lake Erie but when they find ways to inhabit primitive communities again. That’s my utopia.”
Kurt Vonnegut
Hey, Richard! I’m taking a break from yardwork—-lots of branches down from the howling winds of the polar vortex that need cleaning up. Maybe others are doing the same today and that’s why your comment is not getting much play? I think it’s more because everyone is too busy whistling past the graveyard, something that is all too common even here on Crock where people are better educated than the norm.
Spring is here! The birds are nesting, the trees are budding, the daffodils are UP and perky, and the Easter Bunny has left goodies for all. It’s time to be bright-sided and employ the power of positive thinking! The Chinese ARE going to make another Great Leap Backward here since they waited too long and are doing too little to overcome their many problems.
They have the words of Mao to guide them also. Mao was quoted as saying in Shanghai in 1959: “When there is not enough to eat people starve to death. It is better to let half of the people die so that the other half can eat their fill.” And although half of all Chinese didn’t starve, they did put a BIG dent in the population—-estimates were around 10% (+/-). Since so many “modern” Chinese are city dwellers and there are so many more of them, they have little hope of surviving at that level—IMO, at least 20-30% will go down this time—250 to 400 million.
In order to get in touch with what’s REALLY important, you need to watch at least one of these programs each night—-TMZ, Access Hollywood, or Entertainment Tonight. An occasional look at one of the “talent” competition shows is good too.
Thanks so much d.o.g. 😉 It’s this sort of advice that I know will save me.
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It seems to be what many Americans are relying on to “save” them, why shouldn’t it work for you? Don’t forget to do lots of “shopping” too.
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Yes, yes! I’ll get a bunch of credit cards and buy everything I’ve ever wanted!
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Be sure to check the labels and buy only things that are made in China. Wouldn’t want to increase the carbon footprint of the U.S. of A. by “buying American”. If it’s made in Chine, it doesn’t count against us. (Mexico is OK too).
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Moving Forward Rather Than Back
We have roughly 10,000,000,000, and under early stone age conditions the carrying capacity of the Earth was roughly 100,000 with communities not much larger than 100 people. As such a return to genuinely primitive conditions would require the elimination of 99.999% of the human population.
Might I suggest that rather than the elimination of 99.999% of the human population, which is what going back to genuinely primitive conditions would evidentally require, we should move forward with solar and wind. If, for example, the cost of solar power continues to decline, desalinization will become cheap enough that we can make ocean water into drinking water anywhere there is ocean. As of 1998, more than half of humanity lived within a 120 miles of the ocean and 2/3 within 250 miles, this should be sufficient.
If solar power is cheap enough, it should be possible to recycle nearly all of our waste. And as living standards are raised to levels comparable to Europe,without immigration, population growth turns negative. although at some point it might actually turn neutral.
If we are able to stabilize the world population and through cheap energy, limit our footprint, then it should be possible to maintain natural preserves, forests and wildlife. We could limit the 6th Extinction to no more than what would occur even under the most draconian approaches to reducing world population, and do so without the loss of modern civilization or keeping large parts of the world’s population in poverty. We can move forward rather than back. Technology could continue to advance.
Straw man. Richard said ‘industrial civilization’. He didn’t say ‘civilization’. The Industrial Revolution started a bit over 200 years ago. We weren’t living in caves in 1790, and that era doesn’t mark the end of the Stone Age. The world population in 1790 was about 1 billion people, not 100,000. I have no idea what you are referencing with the 10 trillion number.
Additionally, there are plenty of people CURRENTLY living without the scale of industrial civilization that most of us in the West have – the Amish, for one. They aren’t living in caves, and they somehow manage to keep themselves fed and clothed.
We have to understand that our economic progress and its attendant environmental problems since 1790 are a direct result of greater access to cheaper energy and more complex technology. These two inputs allow expansion of humanity’s effect on the environment. More cheaper energy and more complex technology will only lead to the same patterns of behavior that have us here in the first place.
“If we are able to stabilize the world population and through cheap energy, limit our footprint, then it should be possible to maintain natural preserves, forests and wildlife.”
If….able….should be possible….
Look at the last two centuries – look at the population curve since then, the use of energy since then, the per capita footprint since then, and the loss of forests and other species since then. It’s just wishful thinking that this magically reverses by continuing the same patterns that have led to the exponential increases since 1790.
No one is asking, at least here, for a sudden culling of populations. We could manage degrowth humanely if we really put our minds to it, but this isn’t even considered. Only continual growth is seen as acceptable. This congenital blindness forces us and our fate in one direction only.
Of course, if we greatly improve medical technology by then, that number could jump significantly higher. Or, we could see a convergence of environmental and economic problems that cause that number to never be reached.
Straw man. Richard said ‘industrial civilization’.
He specifically uses the word “industrial” only once and as that to be rejected in favor of… what? The Vonnegut quote he gave at the end of his comment spoke of inhabiting “primitive communities again.” Setting that aside and assuming he simply meant to go back to just before the beginning of the industrial age, as at the turn of 1800 we had roughly 1,000,000,000 people, that would still mean shedding roughly 90% of the population we will shortly have. (I was going on a UN 2012 projection for 10.9 billion by 2050, so it seemed reasonable to expect 10 billion in the next 2-3 decades, but it makes little difference if we instead say 35 years.) Of course we aren’t there yet, but looking simply at the current world population (7,300,000,000), this would still mean shedding over 86% of our current population. And how rapidly would we have to shed that population in order to make the difference? What sort of political regime would make it possible? Are we speaking of mass forced sterilization? And what sort of political regime would be required to impose, maintain and enforce pre-industrial conditions on a population that might want something better?
Jimbills writes:
Additionally, there are plenty of people CURRENTLY living without the scale of industrial civilization that most of us in the West have – the Amish, for one.
Amish are a tiny minority that voluntarily live in communities with quite small populations, a fair amount of land per capita, but with access to the products of the technology of modern civilization when necessary. The vast majority of people who live without access to modern civilization due so involuntarily and live in extreme poverty, as throughout much of India and Africa. Furthermore, the majority of the world population currently lives in urban areas. Due to its density, this sort of urbanization requires a modern industrial civilization. The abandonment of industry would require a massive exodus. How exactly would you manage that? Who would plan for it and what means would they have to insure those plans are followed and enforced when necessary?
Furthermore, we aren’t speaking of a single world government imposing pre-industrial conditions globally. What we would be speaking of are numerous governments imposing such conditions upon their own populations. Now assume for the moment that some countries or societies are cheaters who refuse to give up the benefits of modern civilization. They would have a great technological advantage over countries that managed to turn back the clock two centuries. This would be a recipe for failure — assuming one wished to achieve pre-industrial conditions globally.
Jimbills writes:
Look at the last two centuries – look at the population curve since then, the use of energy since then, the per capita footprint since then, and the loss of forests and other species since then. It’s just wishful thinking that this magically reverses by continuing the same patterns that have led to the exponential increases since 1790.
Greater affluence results in explosive, exponential population growth, in part through the introduction of vaccines and antibiotics, but then it leads to a leveling off of population growth and eventually its cessation, as in much of Western Europe, Japan and Hong Kong. At first, this is largely due to the introduction of birth control and then to the need for more education prior to entering the workforce. In primitive agrarian societies you can send a child out into the fields who might actually result in a net increase in family income by the age of five. But in more economically advanced societies the child will have to make it through highschool or even college, and by the time the “child” enters the workforce they have become an adult living on their own, never bringing their parents a return on their “investment,” becoming a luxury item.
Economic growth leads to greater air and water pollution (e.g., 19th Century London, early 21st Century Bejing) at, but as greater affluence is achieved and people are able to consider the long-term consequences of air pollution rather than simply being concerned with day-to-day survival, it becomes easier to regulate pollution, both by means of the technology brought about by economic growth and the laws of a more affluent society.
If population growth returns to zero, then with the rapidly falling prices of solar energy and other technological advances being made today, obtaining water through desalinization and materials largely through reliance on recycling will certainly be possible and at diminishing cost. I believe this is in fact far more realistic than the view that we could somehow either get all human societies to accept pre-industrial conditions or impose such conditions upon those who insist on a modern industrial economy after having already imposed pre-industrial conditions on our own.
Timothy and jimbills have engaged in another of those exercises that I have called “navel gazing” in the past. Jimbills understands what is likely to happen but is too “polite” (and fond of turning phrases like “degrowth”) to spell it out. Timothy is in denial, and wants to look on the bright side, and very reasonably states in conclusion:
“I believe this is in fact far more realistic than the view that we could somehow either get all human societies to accept pre-industrial conditions or impose such conditions upon those who insist on a modern industrial economy after having already imposed pre-industrial conditions on our own”.
I will be blunt. Timothy is 100% correct in saying we “will not get human societies to accept….”, even though he used far too many words to get the idea across. The history of man’s “societies” makes that all too clear, and the present model of run-amok capitalism, free-markets, growth, and profit will not be reversed with words and bright-sided wishful thinking.
It is going to take catastrophe to get people moving, and by then it will likely be too late for most. The “degrowth” will occur as a result of natural law expressing itself, not because humans have done it consciously and with forethought. The effects of AGW will kill off some large percentage of the human race, and the survivors will live at many levels, from the already existing subsistence level to small pockets of “lucky” (and rich) folk who may maintain some semblance of life as it was in the near preindustrial era. Look at 100 to 500 million as a realistic number for the whole planet.
And can we PLEASE stop talking about Pitcairn, a volcanic flyspeck less than half the size of Manhattan that is 3000 miles away from its food source in NZ? Or any of the other flyspecks that offer no refuge? Thinking that they can “save us” is about as ridiculous as thinking we can colonize Mars.
For the bright-sided and self-deluded, I will add that it may not be too late, that we COULD perhaps reverse AGW if we began yesterday. As long as the Kochs and their many equivalents all over the globe hold power, it won’t happen.
It is navel gazing, yes, because it’s just a hypothetical. We won’t do it, as we aren’t really an intelligent species.
“It is going to take catastrophe to get people moving, and by then it will likely be too late for most.”
Yes, that’s the likeliest scenario.
I especially enjoyed Timothy’s plan to provide desalinization along the coastlines in a warming world, though. That’s a solid idea.
On “degrowth”, it’s not my term, but others, like Serge Latouche. Many people have developed strategies to humanely manage a scale down, but no one is listening, so we get the inhumane version you describe.
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You weren’t serious when you said this, were you? That’s a snark, right?
“I especially enjoyed Timothy’s plan to provide desalinization along the coastlines in a warming world, though. That’s a solid idea”.
Timothy is apparently among those who look at so-called panaceas like desalination, Solar Roadway, and CWET as things that will save us. I won’t bore everyone by listing out all the reasons why desalination is not a workable solution to our water crisis—-there are many.
Suffice it to say that it has only limited chances of success in a few places on the planet, and that it os extremely damaging to the ocean environment and very energy-intensive (and thus likely to add to GHG and AGW).
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Yes – sarcasm doesn’t translate well in the comments.
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dumboldguy, I understand all too well what is likely to happen. What I see are water shortages, famines, wars and disease and the deaths of billions – so long as plutocrats are able to impose their short-term visions motivated by the unchecked pursuit of profits, society be damned. If the only vision we have of what the future has to offer is what is likely to happen then that sort of future will become virtually unavoidable. For there to be a realizable alternative, we must have a vision of what is both realistic and involves the exercise of foresight. In my view, elements of this should include revenue neutral carbon taxes that shift us more rapidly to solar and wind, pollution laws, and world powers that remain world powers, continuing to embrace technology, able to offer guidance and assistance or impose penalties, including tariffs and other economic sanctions, as is prudent. Then we must take the necessary steps to implement this vision.
Can’t really disagree, except that “foresight” has not been one of mankind’s strongest points in the past, and we don’t seem to be exercising much of it right now.
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FWIW, the most effective way to reduce population growth in the developing world is to enable women to have economic control over their own lives. I mention this only because it is not mentioned anywhere in this discussion that I can see.*
The problem with cheap energy, water, land, food, etc., etc., is that we’re not very good at limiting ourselves when we don’t have to. I submit that if “infinite” energy from cold fusion suddenly became feasible that we would (albeit over a longer period of time) use so much of it that we would still be overheating the planet thanks to the laws of thermodynamics. Or there would be some other severe, negative impact.
There is no way out in the long term except for the human race to develop a more rational approach to living on this planet. Perhaps a catastrophe will occur that drastically reduces the population as suggested by some here. However, that would be a temporary measure because, without a global shift in philosophy, we would rebuild the same culture over time. It’s our nature.
I think that the biggest mistake made by the early lawmakers of the United States was that they did not develop a bill of responsibilities concurrent with the bill of rights (or preferably at the same time as the constitution). There are several that are implicit in the constitution and our legal system, but they are routinely ignored (serving on a jury, voting, etc.). What if it was a legal civic responsibility to protect the commons? To ensure equal access to education and work (and OMG healthcare) across the community? Would that have destroyed our economy? Or just made the United States a model of sustainable development? Or been rendered ineffective by special interests?
“….the most effective way to reduce population growth in the developing world is to enable women to have economic control over their own lives. I mention this only because it is not mentioned anywhere in this discussion that I can see”.
Anyone who has any familiarity with human population dynamics and demographics knows that’s true, but only to a point. It’s a sub-set of what happens when countries “develop” and the need to have 6 or 8 kids just to meet survival needs fades. Unfortunately, as the population growth rate slows and even levels off or goes negative, the carbon footprint of each human grows because of the “improvements” in their lifestyle. And they live for a longer period of time. Net result? Fewer people but more harm to the environment in the long term. Take a look at the population pyramids for Japan and Jordan, compare the U.S. with Uganda. Look at Russia. Click on a year in the graph to the upper right to “see the future” and compare the pyramids—-far fewer young people in 2100 but still too many people in total.
This is a great site to play on—interactive and visual—-good data from the UN.
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Your main point that a smaller population that insists on a western level of consumption is no more helpful than a larger population with the same energy consumption level is well taken.
However, it’s not a matter of economic survival to have more children. Every one of those children also need food, healthcare, firewood, water, etc., etc. Pregnancy and childbirth are dangerous and child rearing reduces the mother’s productivity as well.
Many (not all) poor women would take the opportunity to have fewer children but are not allowed to make that decision because they are economically dependent on men and not allowed to make their own decisions and/or do not have access to affordable contraception for religious, social or economic reasons.
Women, given the choice, *tend* to limit the number of children they have independent of their level of poverty.
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“However, it’s not a matter of economic survival to have more children”.
No? You need to study the issue a bit more and understand that in the third world, families with 6 to 8 children were the norm until recently, and although that number is decreasing, the reason families have so many children is to optimize chances of survival for the family unit.
It wasn’t too long ago that half of all children in many countries died before reaching five years of age, and the strides that have been made in reducing that number contribute to the huge bulges at the bottom of many of the “population pyramids” in the link I posted—have you looked at it?. If you didn’t have enough kids and got unlucky and too many died, there would be no one to take care of you in your old age.
If you study what is now happening in India, you will find that families keep one foot in the village while some migrate to the cities to work in the factories—-some stay behind and work the family land, while others go to the cities—they are mutually supporting, and the children are expected to toil in the fields at an early age. Only when the family starts to approach “middle class” do the children get treated differently, and most of those families that then become more “developed” DO cut back on having children because a large family is not advantageous in the urban setting.
Every one of those third world children is put to work obtaining food, firewood, water, etc at a young age. That helps the mother’s survival chances as well as the whole family unit’s. As you say, “Pregnancy and childbirth are dangerous and child rearing reduces the mother’s productivity”. It may seem counter intuitive, but having MORE kids (up to a point) is a good thing—-the older kids help “rear” the younger siblings also.
“Many (not all) poor women would take the opportunity to have fewer children but are not allowed to make that decision because they are economically dependent on men….”
Again, you need to study the issue and stop being polite. In much of the world, it is not “economic dependency” but misogyny and testosterone that have resulted in so many women being treated as little better than animals. Even here in the U.S. in 2015, women are second class citizens in so many ways. We could remedy that if we could somehow make women bigger and stronger than men so that they could return the abuse.
Women are simply not given the “choices” that you think they are.
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No, I didn’t take the time to go to through your links – I am still working and have yet to start my taxes, so am relying on what I learned when studying international development (reading the UN reports on women, economy, etc., as well as visiting Haiti, working with Amy Smith, etc.) 10 years ago. I admit I may be out of date and I agree that there is an “optimum” number of children to assure old age support (an issue even for first world me, who is childless).
Nonetheless, there are hundreds of millions of women in the developing world who would use contraception were it readily available. There was a stat in some of the articles I zipped through in writing the original post that I should have grabbed. The fact that having more children still happens does not necessarily mean that the women want to keep having so many. Careful not to convolute!
And I’ll still try to be polite, even if I find your brutal frankness refreshing. 🙂 Gotta go make the world safe for developing drugs that target nuclear hormone receptors. 🙂
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“FWIW, the most effective way to reduce population growth in the developing world is to enable women to have economic control over their own lives.”
And access to education. These strategies certainly help, but they won’t be enough to solve our problems in terms of global population growth or destruction to the biosphere.
“The problem with cheap energy, water, land, food, etc., etc., is that we’re not very good at limiting ourselves when we don’t have to.”
This is 100% our problem, and it’s the one thing most people, even here, completely ignore. I agree about your thoughts on cold fusion. It would destroy us completely, and not just because of thermodynamics.
The only reason for hope would be if the vast majority became aware of the actual problem (our own desires) and decided as a rational course to put limits on those desires. Unfortunately, it’s never considered. It’s just mocked, as Cy did here, or written off, as Timothy did – and we’re supposed to be the wise ones when compared to the dittoheads running the show.
Any realistic plan for actually dealing with the environment and long-term sustainability should begin and end with limiting, ending, or scaling back human expansionism. The easiest way to term that is economic growth, but it also applies to populations and technology. Instead, it never enters the conversation at all, and that’s what I find deeply frustrating.
We only have the ‘onwards and upwards’ plan, which to me is like eating more and more cake each day as a way to lose weight. Eventually a person would lose weight doing that, and pretty dramatically, although the means would be rather unpleasant.
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Timothy – your ‘plan’ is just a maintenance of the same trends that are causing our environmental and resource problems. Getting every person on Earth wealthier and wealthier as a plan to flatline populations isn’t a plan at all – it’s suicide. Every nation becoming wealthy enough to cut only the most egregious forms of pollution, or offshore them somewhere else (where, if every country is doing it?), while other the other forms of pollution/extraction continue unabated, isn’t a rational plan at all.
You blame the plutocrats, and okay, and this is partially true. But if everyone else wants the same things (in today’s word that equals more, more, more), it doesn’t matter who is at the very top of the food chain. The plutocrats just benefit the most from our own desires and stupidity.
Regarding ‘realism’, your plan is most realistically the one our society will adopt. As far as it realistically solving our problems, it won’t AT ALL. It’ll just make them worse.
I was going to write one long comment here, but I’ll split it up as responses to the other two commenters. The most important one will be to Linda.
With apologies in advance to any Jewish person who finds the comparison inapt or even offensive coming from an ignorant shiksa–
More and more, I feel the way I imagine that ordinary non-Jewish Europeans felt as the effects of Hitler’s rule became too pervasive to ignore.
There was nothing any single person could do to stop the Holocaust. But some courageous individuals, most of whose names we will never know, did what they could to resist and to protect individual Jews, at great personal risk and probably often at horrific personal cost.
I’m going to work every day, watching movies on Netflix on the weekends, and obsessing about why I’ve gained 2 pounds and how I can lose them without being hungry. DOG is doing yardwork. Meanwhile, the Sixth Mass Extinction is proceeding apace.
Every day I wonder what it is I’m called to do in this terrible time. I don’t know.
I have a similar take 1happywoman, but I call it the “lucky Jew”. There are those Jews who understood in 1932 that this time it was different and in the face of all CW and the scoffing of their friends and families, they packed their stuff into small suitcases and walked away from their lives and their friends and families who would be shipped off to the camps.
For nearly 20 years I have tried to live inside that kind of skin, the one with enough intelligence and awareness to understand what is going on and enough confidence, not to mention arrogance, in my judgement to act on it soon enough to make a difference for me and my family when the majority appear to be determined to walk into the gas chambers together.
Yes! If only we could be like the “lucky Jews” and pack our stuff into small suitcases and walk away–give me five minutes to shut down my computer and brush my teeth, and I’m ready to go!
Unfortunately for us, there’s no place else to walk away to. . . .
When the world’s most populous country treats land as a toxic dump, just to polish our Ipods and Iphones (see the attached video) it makes you wonder what respect they have for air and water ..
Below, why China’s water crisis forced the climate deal with Obama.
Personally, I’m sceptical that the “climate deal” with Obama is anything more than a public relations exercise. But we’ll have to wait a decade or more to find out, by which time both Obama and China’s pres Xi Jinping will be out of office.
A disease is not cured by putting band-aids on the symptoms. To be rid of the disease, the source must be eradicated. The source of the disease that’s killing our Mother is the psychopathic, dominator culture of industrial civilisation. The end of that civilisation is absolutely essential to the continuation of human Life on Earth.
“Human beings will be happier – not when they cure cancer or get to Mars or eliminate racial prejudice or flush Lake Erie but when they find ways to inhabit primitive communities again. That’s my utopia.”
Kurt Vonnegut
Back in the 1970s, the magazine “Mother Earth News” was popular, and I see that it’s still around (http://www.motherearthnews.com). The magazine had all kinds of useful tips on how to move “back to the land.” Lots of people who lived in the big city read it, even though hardly any of them ever grew a tomato, let alone built a log cabin. It was the big dream – live like our ancestors. Even the few who made the move to the countryside still wanted their cars, pickup trucks, chain saws, TV sets, modern medical care and an occasional airplane ticket to visit the Caribbean Islands or Europe. And these days they want solar panels too, but with a grid connection so they can enjoy the Internet at night when the sun isn’t shining.
So in other words, this dream of living like folks did in the 16th century and saying that we’ll be happy once we can do that – quite frankly, I’m not quite buying it. But for those who really want to “walk the walk,” there are some remote islands out there where people still live almost like the ancient ones. I’ll suggest Pitcairn Island – from what I understand, they are quite open to immigration:
Pitcairn is just as plugged in as any other place with Western culture these days. Their extension cord just goes a little further.
The real horror is that there is NO ESCAPE. We’re trapped, and a lot of that trap is composed of our own thinking rather than actual physical restraints. Your suggestion is that the hippies should just move to remote islands while the rest of the world stays the same. This solves our problems….how?
Jimbills, you’re misinterpreting what I said. I was reacting to Richard’s post, where his suggestion seemed to be that what we need is the death of industrial civilization. If I interpret his post correctly, we should all go back to the days of log cabins, lighting the night with a campfire or homemade candles, transport by horseback, growing our own food, etc.
There are plenty of people who agree with that sentiment, and the Mother Earth News caters to that market.
Since you can’t realistically hope to live that kind of lifestyle in any developed country, the only solution for the individual who wants to return to 16th century living is to remove to some remote corner of the world where technology has barely penetrated. There are a number of such places, the best example being (I think) the Sentinelese tribes in the Andaman Islands near India:
Unfortunately, if you go there, the locals will probably kill you.
By contrast, the Pitcairn Islands remain pretty welcoming to immigrants. If you’re in reasonably good physical condition and have the financial resources of a middle class person, you have a good chance of being granted residence. For man people on this blog, emigrating to Pitcairn is realistic. It’s not an impossible dream. The big question is: could you adapt to that lifestyle? Are you willing to give up the iPod and frozen pizzas in exchange for a garden hoe and fishing canoe?
Sure, Pitcairn is not really a 16th century society. In Pitcairn you can have your Internet (as long as the diesel generators hold out, which is questionable), but point is that you can also live in a grass hut, grow a garden, go fishing, live without electricity, etc. You don’t need a car – a horse will do. The tropical climate makes life easier, since you needn’t fear freezing to death in winter. Just remember that if you get a toothache, the cure might be a pair of pliers. If you get a serious illness, the cure might be faith healing.
Well, I’ve actually read about Pitcairn fairly extensively. The island relies 100% on incoming food and material from the developed world, and due to its isolation it can’t create a sufficient economy to draw in much more than it already does. Its current population of under 60 people is too high to maintain itself sustainably even if they just wanted to grow their own food. An earlier Polynesian colony on the island died out due to resource depletion. The island theoretically could sustain a very small population on its own given enough luck in weather patterns and a rigorous control of population size.
What’s written on the small scale can often apply to the large given time and given sufficient growth.
Your comment, as well as Timothy Chase’s above, reflects an inability to consider degrowth on the global scale as either a possibility or a necessity. It’s like it’s not there – there’s no way we can think about something as crazy as that. It’s not an option. You’re not alone, of course. The rest of the developed world thinks the same way. So, we just plow on, then, and get what’s coming to us.
When I see a new generation of youngsters in some parts of the globe, who live a virtual life, in small roomed high density skyscrapers with a mass of electronic equipment rarely venturing out in the real world, I am reminded of a work colleague of mine in the late 1970s, who took part in the first reality TV program, “Living in the Past”, filmed in Dorset U.K. He certainly learned a lot and appreciated the experience.
We are doomed. Resistance is futile. Resistance is futile! Resistance is FUTILE!!
We don’t have renewable energy – so we are doomed.
But if we had renewable energy, it would be worse.
The less expensive that renewable energy, the more doomed we will be.
because humans are incapable of change, incapable of making intelligent decisions, incapable of population control, incapable of reforming political or economic systems.
Meanwhile, back at the ranch, all we need to do is stop putting [CO2] in the air, and half the battle is won.
And then we would have TIME – generations – to reduce population even as we bring a higher standard of living to everyone, even as the Earth starts cool and habitats recover.
But, no…. let’s concentrate on how doomed we are, and how impossible it all is, instead. There’s a cunning plan, by gum.
What ARE you SMOKING up there in Vermont? You do show some small connection with reality when you say:
“…..humans are incapable of change, incapable of making intelligent decisions, incapable of population control, incapable of reforming political or economic systems”.
The evidence for that is all around us and can be found in any history book as well.
Yeah, “….all we need to do is stop putting [CO2] in the air, and HALF the battle is won”. (Care to tell us about the OTHER half of the battle?)
“And then we would have TIME – generations – to reduce population even as we bring a higher standard of living to everyone, even as the Earth starts (to) cool and habitats recover”. (That’s a voiceover while pictures of children, puppydogs, and beautiful landscapes play across the screen—-with “non-doomy” music in the background, of course).
“The evidence for that is all around us and can be found in any history book as well.”
History books are also filled with examples of the opposite of your overly-dark vision. Today’s newspapers are filled with examples. The glass is NOT empty. We are not doomed – although we face enormous challenges.
” (Care to tell us about the OTHER half of the battle?)”
yeah – it’s the next paragraph – reducing population levels with the luxury of the time we can enjoy once AGW is solved.
Nothing in these videos comes close to acknowledging the utterly catastrophic nature of the nascent global state shift or the ongoing mass extinction event.
The human race, along with all the rest of Life on Earth, is in very serious trouble and we spend our time discussing how to treat the symptoms of the disease that is killing the planet rather than trying to eliminate the disease itself.
A disease is not cured by putting band-aids on the symptoms. To be rid of the disease, the source must be eradicated. The source of the disease that’s killing our Mother is the psychopathic, dominator culture of industrial civilisation. The end of that civilisation is absolutely essential to the continuation of human Life on Earth.
“Human beings will be happier – not when they cure cancer or get to Mars or eliminate racial prejudice or flush Lake Erie but when they find ways to inhabit primitive communities again. That’s my utopia.”
Kurt Vonnegut
Hey, Richard! I’m taking a break from yardwork—-lots of branches down from the howling winds of the polar vortex that need cleaning up. Maybe others are doing the same today and that’s why your comment is not getting much play? I think it’s more because everyone is too busy whistling past the graveyard, something that is all too common even here on Crock where people are better educated than the norm.
Spring is here! The birds are nesting, the trees are budding, the daffodils are UP and perky, and the Easter Bunny has left goodies for all. It’s time to be bright-sided and employ the power of positive thinking! The Chinese ARE going to make another Great Leap Backward here since they waited too long and are doing too little to overcome their many problems.
They have the words of Mao to guide them also. Mao was quoted as saying in Shanghai in 1959: “When there is not enough to eat people starve to death. It is better to let half of the people die so that the other half can eat their fill.” And although half of all Chinese didn’t starve, they did put a BIG dent in the population—-estimates were around 10% (+/-). Since so many “modern” Chinese are city dwellers and there are so many more of them, they have little hope of surviving at that level—IMO, at least 20-30% will go down this time—250 to 400 million.
Don’t worry, be happy!
I know. You’re right. I don’t know why I sweat the small stuff so much. There’s so much that’s really important to think about.
Like I’m really pissed that the Dallas Stars aren’t going to make it to the Stanley Cup playoffs this year!
And horror of horrors! I heard that her doctor told Kim Kardashian that she can’t get pregnant again!
I just need to exercise a bit more self-discipline.
In order to get in touch with what’s REALLY important, you need to watch at least one of these programs each night—-TMZ, Access Hollywood, or Entertainment Tonight. An occasional look at one of the “talent” competition shows is good too.
Thanks so much d.o.g. 😉 It’s this sort of advice that I know will save me.
It seems to be what many Americans are relying on to “save” them, why shouldn’t it work for you? Don’t forget to do lots of “shopping” too.
Yes, yes! I’ll get a bunch of credit cards and buy everything I’ve ever wanted!
Be sure to check the labels and buy only things that are made in China. Wouldn’t want to increase the carbon footprint of the U.S. of A. by “buying American”. If it’s made in Chine, it doesn’t count against us. (Mexico is OK too).
Moving Forward Rather Than Back
We have roughly 10,000,000,000, and under early stone age conditions the carrying capacity of the Earth was roughly 100,000 with communities not much larger than 100 people. As such a return to genuinely primitive conditions would require the elimination of 99.999% of the human population.
Might I suggest that rather than the elimination of 99.999% of the human population, which is what going back to genuinely primitive conditions would evidentally require, we should move forward with solar and wind. If, for example, the cost of solar power continues to decline, desalinization will become cheap enough that we can make ocean water into drinking water anywhere there is ocean. As of 1998, more than half of humanity lived within a 120 miles of the ocean and 2/3 within 250 miles, this should be sufficient.
For those figures, please see:
If solar power is cheap enough, it should be possible to recycle nearly all of our waste. And as living standards are raised to levels comparable to Europe,without immigration, population growth turns negative. although at some point it might actually turn neutral.
Please see:
If we are able to stabilize the world population and through cheap energy, limit our footprint, then it should be possible to maintain natural preserves, forests and wildlife. We could limit the 6th Extinction to no more than what would occur even under the most draconian approaches to reducing world population, and do so without the loss of modern civilization or keeping large parts of the world’s population in poverty. We can move forward rather than back. Technology could continue to advance.
Straw man. Richard said ‘industrial civilization’. He didn’t say ‘civilization’. The Industrial Revolution started a bit over 200 years ago. We weren’t living in caves in 1790, and that era doesn’t mark the end of the Stone Age. The world population in 1790 was about 1 billion people, not 100,000. I have no idea what you are referencing with the 10 trillion number.
Additionally, there are plenty of people CURRENTLY living without the scale of industrial civilization that most of us in the West have – the Amish, for one. They aren’t living in caves, and they somehow manage to keep themselves fed and clothed.
We have to understand that our economic progress and its attendant environmental problems since 1790 are a direct result of greater access to cheaper energy and more complex technology. These two inputs allow expansion of humanity’s effect on the environment. More cheaper energy and more complex technology will only lead to the same patterns of behavior that have us here in the first place.
“If we are able to stabilize the world population and through cheap energy, limit our footprint, then it should be possible to maintain natural preserves, forests and wildlife.”
If….able….should be possible….
Look at the last two centuries – look at the population curve since then, the use of energy since then, the per capita footprint since then, and the loss of forests and other species since then. It’s just wishful thinking that this magically reverses by continuing the same patterns that have led to the exponential increases since 1790.
No one is asking, at least here, for a sudden culling of populations. We could manage degrowth humanely if we really put our minds to it, but this isn’t even considered. Only continual growth is seen as acceptable. This congenital blindness forces us and our fate in one direction only.
error – 10 ‘billion’ number, not ‘trillion’. I read that wrong at first glance. Still, the current world population is just over 7 billion. A world population of 10 billion isn’t projected until after 2050:
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/earth/10348822/World-population-to-reach-9.7-billion-by-2050-new-study-predicts.html
Of course, if we greatly improve medical technology by then, that number could jump significantly higher. Or, we could see a convergence of environmental and economic problems that cause that number to never be reached.
Jimbills writes:
He specifically uses the word “industrial” only once and as that to be rejected in favor of… what? The Vonnegut quote he gave at the end of his comment spoke of inhabiting “primitive communities again.” Setting that aside and assuming he simply meant to go back to just before the beginning of the industrial age, as at the turn of 1800 we had roughly 1,000,000,000 people, that would still mean shedding roughly 90% of the population we will shortly have. (I was going on a UN 2012 projection for 10.9 billion by 2050, so it seemed reasonable to expect 10 billion in the next 2-3 decades, but it makes little difference if we instead say 35 years.) Of course we aren’t there yet, but looking simply at the current world population (7,300,000,000), this would still mean shedding over 86% of our current population. And how rapidly would we have to shed that population in order to make the difference? What sort of political regime would make it possible? Are we speaking of mass forced sterilization? And what sort of political regime would be required to impose, maintain and enforce pre-industrial conditions on a population that might want something better?
Jimbills writes:
Amish are a tiny minority that voluntarily live in communities with quite small populations, a fair amount of land per capita, but with access to the products of the technology of modern civilization when necessary. The vast majority of people who live without access to modern civilization due so involuntarily and live in extreme poverty, as throughout much of India and Africa. Furthermore, the majority of the world population currently lives in urban areas. Due to its density, this sort of urbanization requires a modern industrial civilization. The abandonment of industry would require a massive exodus. How exactly would you manage that? Who would plan for it and what means would they have to insure those plans are followed and enforced when necessary?
Furthermore, we aren’t speaking of a single world government imposing pre-industrial conditions globally. What we would be speaking of are numerous governments imposing such conditions upon their own populations. Now assume for the moment that some countries or societies are cheaters who refuse to give up the benefits of modern civilization. They would have a great technological advantage over countries that managed to turn back the clock two centuries. This would be a recipe for failure — assuming one wished to achieve pre-industrial conditions globally.
Jimbills writes:
Greater affluence results in explosive, exponential population growth, in part through the introduction of vaccines and antibiotics, but then it leads to a leveling off of population growth and eventually its cessation, as in much of Western Europe, Japan and Hong Kong. At first, this is largely due to the introduction of birth control and then to the need for more education prior to entering the workforce. In primitive agrarian societies you can send a child out into the fields who might actually result in a net increase in family income by the age of five. But in more economically advanced societies the child will have to make it through highschool or even college, and by the time the “child” enters the workforce they have become an adult living on their own, never bringing their parents a return on their “investment,” becoming a luxury item.
Economic growth leads to greater air and water pollution (e.g., 19th Century London, early 21st Century Bejing) at, but as greater affluence is achieved and people are able to consider the long-term consequences of air pollution rather than simply being concerned with day-to-day survival, it becomes easier to regulate pollution, both by means of the technology brought about by economic growth and the laws of a more affluent society.
If population growth returns to zero, then with the rapidly falling prices of solar energy and other technological advances being made today, obtaining water through desalinization and materials largely through reliance on recycling will certainly be possible and at diminishing cost. I believe this is in fact far more realistic than the view that we could somehow either get all human societies to accept pre-industrial conditions or impose such conditions upon those who insist on a modern industrial economy after having already imposed pre-industrial conditions on our own.
Timothy and jimbills have engaged in another of those exercises that I have called “navel gazing” in the past. Jimbills understands what is likely to happen but is too “polite” (and fond of turning phrases like “degrowth”) to spell it out. Timothy is in denial, and wants to look on the bright side, and very reasonably states in conclusion:
“I believe this is in fact far more realistic than the view that we could somehow either get all human societies to accept pre-industrial conditions or impose such conditions upon those who insist on a modern industrial economy after having already imposed pre-industrial conditions on our own”.
I will be blunt. Timothy is 100% correct in saying we “will not get human societies to accept….”, even though he used far too many words to get the idea across. The history of man’s “societies” makes that all too clear, and the present model of run-amok capitalism, free-markets, growth, and profit will not be reversed with words and bright-sided wishful thinking.
It is going to take catastrophe to get people moving, and by then it will likely be too late for most. The “degrowth” will occur as a result of natural law expressing itself, not because humans have done it consciously and with forethought. The effects of AGW will kill off some large percentage of the human race, and the survivors will live at many levels, from the already existing subsistence level to small pockets of “lucky” (and rich) folk who may maintain some semblance of life as it was in the near preindustrial era. Look at 100 to 500 million as a realistic number for the whole planet.
And can we PLEASE stop talking about Pitcairn, a volcanic flyspeck less than half the size of Manhattan that is 3000 miles away from its food source in NZ? Or any of the other flyspecks that offer no refuge? Thinking that they can “save us” is about as ridiculous as thinking we can colonize Mars.
For the bright-sided and self-deluded, I will add that it may not be too late, that we COULD perhaps reverse AGW if we began yesterday. As long as the Kochs and their many equivalents all over the globe hold power, it won’t happen.
It is navel gazing, yes, because it’s just a hypothetical. We won’t do it, as we aren’t really an intelligent species.
“It is going to take catastrophe to get people moving, and by then it will likely be too late for most.”
Yes, that’s the likeliest scenario.
I especially enjoyed Timothy’s plan to provide desalinization along the coastlines in a warming world, though. That’s a solid idea.
On “degrowth”, it’s not my term, but others, like Serge Latouche. Many people have developed strategies to humanely manage a scale down, but no one is listening, so we get the inhumane version you describe.
You weren’t serious when you said this, were you? That’s a snark, right?
“I especially enjoyed Timothy’s plan to provide desalinization along the coastlines in a warming world, though. That’s a solid idea”.
Timothy is apparently among those who look at so-called panaceas like desalination, Solar Roadway, and CWET as things that will save us. I won’t bore everyone by listing out all the reasons why desalination is not a workable solution to our water crisis—-there are many.
Suffice it to say that it has only limited chances of success in a few places on the planet, and that it os extremely damaging to the ocean environment and very energy-intensive (and thus likely to add to GHG and AGW).
Yes – sarcasm doesn’t translate well in the comments.
dumboldguy, I understand all too well what is likely to happen. What I see are water shortages, famines, wars and disease and the deaths of billions – so long as plutocrats are able to impose their short-term visions motivated by the unchecked pursuit of profits, society be damned. If the only vision we have of what the future has to offer is what is likely to happen then that sort of future will become virtually unavoidable. For there to be a realizable alternative, we must have a vision of what is both realistic and involves the exercise of foresight. In my view, elements of this should include revenue neutral carbon taxes that shift us more rapidly to solar and wind, pollution laws, and world powers that remain world powers, continuing to embrace technology, able to offer guidance and assistance or impose penalties, including tariffs and other economic sanctions, as is prudent. Then we must take the necessary steps to implement this vision.
Can’t really disagree, except that “foresight” has not been one of mankind’s strongest points in the past, and we don’t seem to be exercising much of it right now.
FWIW, the most effective way to reduce population growth in the developing world is to enable women to have economic control over their own lives. I mention this only because it is not mentioned anywhere in this discussion that I can see.*
The problem with cheap energy, water, land, food, etc., etc., is that we’re not very good at limiting ourselves when we don’t have to. I submit that if “infinite” energy from cold fusion suddenly became feasible that we would (albeit over a longer period of time) use so much of it that we would still be overheating the planet thanks to the laws of thermodynamics. Or there would be some other severe, negative impact.
There is no way out in the long term except for the human race to develop a more rational approach to living on this planet. Perhaps a catastrophe will occur that drastically reduces the population as suggested by some here. However, that would be a temporary measure because, without a global shift in philosophy, we would rebuild the same culture over time. It’s our nature.
I think that the biggest mistake made by the early lawmakers of the United States was that they did not develop a bill of responsibilities concurrent with the bill of rights (or preferably at the same time as the constitution). There are several that are implicit in the constitution and our legal system, but they are routinely ignored (serving on a jury, voting, etc.). What if it was a legal civic responsibility to protect the commons? To ensure equal access to education and work (and OMG healthcare) across the community? Would that have destroyed our economy? Or just made the United States a model of sustainable development? Or been rendered ineffective by special interests?
Sorry, DOG, I guess I’m a navel-gazer, too…
“….the most effective way to reduce population growth in the developing world is to enable women to have economic control over their own lives. I mention this only because it is not mentioned anywhere in this discussion that I can see”.
Anyone who has any familiarity with human population dynamics and demographics knows that’s true, but only to a point. It’s a sub-set of what happens when countries “develop” and the need to have 6 or 8 kids just to meet survival needs fades. Unfortunately, as the population growth rate slows and even levels off or goes negative, the carbon footprint of each human grows because of the “improvements” in their lifestyle. And they live for a longer period of time. Net result? Fewer people but more harm to the environment in the long term. Take a look at the population pyramids for Japan and Jordan, compare the U.S. with Uganda. Look at Russia. Click on a year in the graph to the upper right to “see the future” and compare the pyramids—-far fewer young people in 2100 but still too many people in total.
http://populationpyramid.net/uganda/
This is a great site to play on—interactive and visual—-good data from the UN.
Your main point that a smaller population that insists on a western level of consumption is no more helpful than a larger population with the same energy consumption level is well taken.
However, it’s not a matter of economic survival to have more children. Every one of those children also need food, healthcare, firewood, water, etc., etc. Pregnancy and childbirth are dangerous and child rearing reduces the mother’s productivity as well.
Many (not all) poor women would take the opportunity to have fewer children but are not allowed to make that decision because they are economically dependent on men and not allowed to make their own decisions and/or do not have access to affordable contraception for religious, social or economic reasons.
Women, given the choice, *tend* to limit the number of children they have independent of their level of poverty.
“However, it’s not a matter of economic survival to have more children”.
No? You need to study the issue a bit more and understand that in the third world, families with 6 to 8 children were the norm until recently, and although that number is decreasing, the reason families have so many children is to optimize chances of survival for the family unit.
It wasn’t too long ago that half of all children in many countries died before reaching five years of age, and the strides that have been made in reducing that number contribute to the huge bulges at the bottom of many of the “population pyramids” in the link I posted—have you looked at it?. If you didn’t have enough kids and got unlucky and too many died, there would be no one to take care of you in your old age.
If you study what is now happening in India, you will find that families keep one foot in the village while some migrate to the cities to work in the factories—-some stay behind and work the family land, while others go to the cities—they are mutually supporting, and the children are expected to toil in the fields at an early age. Only when the family starts to approach “middle class” do the children get treated differently, and most of those families that then become more “developed” DO cut back on having children because a large family is not advantageous in the urban setting.
Every one of those third world children is put to work obtaining food, firewood, water, etc at a young age. That helps the mother’s survival chances as well as the whole family unit’s. As you say, “Pregnancy and childbirth are dangerous and child rearing reduces the mother’s productivity”. It may seem counter intuitive, but having MORE kids (up to a point) is a good thing—-the older kids help “rear” the younger siblings also.
“Many (not all) poor women would take the opportunity to have fewer children but are not allowed to make that decision because they are economically dependent on men….”
Again, you need to study the issue and stop being polite. In much of the world, it is not “economic dependency” but misogyny and testosterone that have resulted in so many women being treated as little better than animals. Even here in the U.S. in 2015, women are second class citizens in so many ways. We could remedy that if we could somehow make women bigger and stronger than men so that they could return the abuse.
Women are simply not given the “choices” that you think they are.
No, I didn’t take the time to go to through your links – I am still working and have yet to start my taxes, so am relying on what I learned when studying international development (reading the UN reports on women, economy, etc., as well as visiting Haiti, working with Amy Smith, etc.) 10 years ago. I admit I may be out of date and I agree that there is an “optimum” number of children to assure old age support (an issue even for first world me, who is childless).
Nonetheless, there are hundreds of millions of women in the developing world who would use contraception were it readily available. There was a stat in some of the articles I zipped through in writing the original post that I should have grabbed. The fact that having more children still happens does not necessarily mean that the women want to keep having so many. Careful not to convolute!
And I’ll still try to be polite, even if I find your brutal frankness refreshing. 🙂 Gotta go make the world safe for developing drugs that target nuclear hormone receptors. 🙂
“FWIW, the most effective way to reduce population growth in the developing world is to enable women to have economic control over their own lives.”
And access to education. These strategies certainly help, but they won’t be enough to solve our problems in terms of global population growth or destruction to the biosphere.
“The problem with cheap energy, water, land, food, etc., etc., is that we’re not very good at limiting ourselves when we don’t have to.”
This is 100% our problem, and it’s the one thing most people, even here, completely ignore. I agree about your thoughts on cold fusion. It would destroy us completely, and not just because of thermodynamics.
The only reason for hope would be if the vast majority became aware of the actual problem (our own desires) and decided as a rational course to put limits on those desires. Unfortunately, it’s never considered. It’s just mocked, as Cy did here, or written off, as Timothy did – and we’re supposed to be the wise ones when compared to the dittoheads running the show.
Any realistic plan for actually dealing with the environment and long-term sustainability should begin and end with limiting, ending, or scaling back human expansionism. The easiest way to term that is economic growth, but it also applies to populations and technology. Instead, it never enters the conversation at all, and that’s what I find deeply frustrating.
We only have the ‘onwards and upwards’ plan, which to me is like eating more and more cake each day as a way to lose weight. Eventually a person would lose weight doing that, and pretty dramatically, although the means would be rather unpleasant.
Timothy – your ‘plan’ is just a maintenance of the same trends that are causing our environmental and resource problems. Getting every person on Earth wealthier and wealthier as a plan to flatline populations isn’t a plan at all – it’s suicide. Every nation becoming wealthy enough to cut only the most egregious forms of pollution, or offshore them somewhere else (where, if every country is doing it?), while other the other forms of pollution/extraction continue unabated, isn’t a rational plan at all.
You blame the plutocrats, and okay, and this is partially true. But if everyone else wants the same things (in today’s word that equals more, more, more), it doesn’t matter who is at the very top of the food chain. The plutocrats just benefit the most from our own desires and stupidity.
Regarding ‘realism’, your plan is most realistically the one our society will adopt. As far as it realistically solving our problems, it won’t AT ALL. It’ll just make them worse.
I was going to write one long comment here, but I’ll split it up as responses to the other two commenters. The most important one will be to Linda.
With apologies in advance to any Jewish person who finds the comparison inapt or even offensive coming from an ignorant shiksa–
More and more, I feel the way I imagine that ordinary non-Jewish Europeans felt as the effects of Hitler’s rule became too pervasive to ignore.
There was nothing any single person could do to stop the Holocaust. But some courageous individuals, most of whose names we will never know, did what they could to resist and to protect individual Jews, at great personal risk and probably often at horrific personal cost.
I’m going to work every day, watching movies on Netflix on the weekends, and obsessing about why I’ve gained 2 pounds and how I can lose them without being hungry. DOG is doing yardwork. Meanwhile, the Sixth Mass Extinction is proceeding apace.
Every day I wonder what it is I’m called to do in this terrible time. I don’t know.
I have a similar take 1happywoman, but I call it the “lucky Jew”. There are those Jews who understood in 1932 that this time it was different and in the face of all CW and the scoffing of their friends and families, they packed their stuff into small suitcases and walked away from their lives and their friends and families who would be shipped off to the camps.
For nearly 20 years I have tried to live inside that kind of skin, the one with enough intelligence and awareness to understand what is going on and enough confidence, not to mention arrogance, in my judgement to act on it soon enough to make a difference for me and my family when the majority appear to be determined to walk into the gas chambers together.
rlmrdl,
Yes! If only we could be like the “lucky Jews” and pack our stuff into small suitcases and walk away–give me five minutes to shut down my computer and brush my teeth, and I’m ready to go!
Unfortunately for us, there’s no place else to walk away to. . . .
Roundup should do the trick…
When the world’s most populous country treats land as a toxic dump, just to polish our Ipods and Iphones (see the attached video) it makes you wonder what respect they have for air and water ..
In today’s news Turkmenistan also tackling water conservation and shortage:
http://phys.org/news/2015-04-turkmenistan-pledges-curb.html
Problems in South Africa too:-
“In a few decades we are going to fight wars over water.”
http://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/features/2015/03/heavy-toll-coal-mining-south-africa-150329123518557.html
Peter wrote:
Below, why China’s water crisis forced the climate deal with Obama.
Personally, I’m sceptical that the “climate deal” with Obama is anything more than a public relations exercise. But we’ll have to wait a decade or more to find out, by which time both Obama and China’s pres Xi Jinping will be out of office.
A disease is not cured by putting band-aids on the symptoms. To be rid of the disease, the source must be eradicated. The source of the disease that’s killing our Mother is the psychopathic, dominator culture of industrial civilisation. The end of that civilisation is absolutely essential to the continuation of human Life on Earth.
“Human beings will be happier – not when they cure cancer or get to Mars or eliminate racial prejudice or flush Lake Erie but when they find ways to inhabit primitive communities again. That’s my utopia.”
Kurt Vonnegut
Back in the 1970s, the magazine “Mother Earth News” was popular, and I see that it’s still around (http://www.motherearthnews.com). The magazine had all kinds of useful tips on how to move “back to the land.” Lots of people who lived in the big city read it, even though hardly any of them ever grew a tomato, let alone built a log cabin. It was the big dream – live like our ancestors. Even the few who made the move to the countryside still wanted their cars, pickup trucks, chain saws, TV sets, modern medical care and an occasional airplane ticket to visit the Caribbean Islands or Europe. And these days they want solar panels too, but with a grid connection so they can enjoy the Internet at night when the sun isn’t shining.
So in other words, this dream of living like folks did in the 16th century and saying that we’ll be happy once we can do that – quite frankly, I’m not quite buying it. But for those who really want to “walk the walk,” there are some remote islands out there where people still live almost like the ancient ones. I’ll suggest Pitcairn Island – from what I understand, they are quite open to immigration:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pitcairn_Islands
Let us know how that works out for you.
Pitcairn is just as plugged in as any other place with Western culture these days. Their extension cord just goes a little further.
The real horror is that there is NO ESCAPE. We’re trapped, and a lot of that trap is composed of our own thinking rather than actual physical restraints. Your suggestion is that the hippies should just move to remote islands while the rest of the world stays the same. This solves our problems….how?
Jimbills, you’re misinterpreting what I said. I was reacting to Richard’s post, where his suggestion seemed to be that what we need is the death of industrial civilization. If I interpret his post correctly, we should all go back to the days of log cabins, lighting the night with a campfire or homemade candles, transport by horseback, growing our own food, etc.
There are plenty of people who agree with that sentiment, and the Mother Earth News caters to that market.
Since you can’t realistically hope to live that kind of lifestyle in any developed country, the only solution for the individual who wants to return to 16th century living is to remove to some remote corner of the world where technology has barely penetrated. There are a number of such places, the best example being (I think) the Sentinelese tribes in the Andaman Islands near India:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sentinelese_people
Unfortunately, if you go there, the locals will probably kill you.
By contrast, the Pitcairn Islands remain pretty welcoming to immigrants. If you’re in reasonably good physical condition and have the financial resources of a middle class person, you have a good chance of being granted residence. For man people on this blog, emigrating to Pitcairn is realistic. It’s not an impossible dream. The big question is: could you adapt to that lifestyle? Are you willing to give up the iPod and frozen pizzas in exchange for a garden hoe and fishing canoe?
Sure, Pitcairn is not really a 16th century society. In Pitcairn you can have your Internet (as long as the diesel generators hold out, which is questionable), but point is that you can also live in a grass hut, grow a garden, go fishing, live without electricity, etc. You don’t need a car – a horse will do. The tropical climate makes life easier, since you needn’t fear freezing to death in winter. Just remember that if you get a toothache, the cure might be a pair of pliers. If you get a serious illness, the cure might be faith healing.
Well, I’ve actually read about Pitcairn fairly extensively. The island relies 100% on incoming food and material from the developed world, and due to its isolation it can’t create a sufficient economy to draw in much more than it already does. Its current population of under 60 people is too high to maintain itself sustainably even if they just wanted to grow their own food. An earlier Polynesian colony on the island died out due to resource depletion. The island theoretically could sustain a very small population on its own given enough luck in weather patterns and a rigorous control of population size.
What’s written on the small scale can often apply to the large given time and given sufficient growth.
Your comment, as well as Timothy Chase’s above, reflects an inability to consider degrowth on the global scale as either a possibility or a necessity. It’s like it’s not there – there’s no way we can think about something as crazy as that. It’s not an option. You’re not alone, of course. The rest of the developed world thinks the same way. So, we just plow on, then, and get what’s coming to us.
Here’s daily life on Pitcairn, btw:
http://onlinepitcairn.com/monthlyfeaturenewslinks.html
When I see a new generation of youngsters in some parts of the globe, who live a virtual life, in small roomed high density skyscrapers with a mass of electronic equipment rarely venturing out in the real world, I am reminded of a work colleague of mine in the late 1970s, who took part in the first reality TV program, “Living in the Past”, filmed in Dorset U.K. He certainly learned a lot and appreciated the experience.
On a cheerier note, here’s a slightly aged Andy Borowitz blog post that may make you smile…
http://www.newyorker.com/humor/borowitz-report/polar-vortex-causes-hundreds-of-injuries-as-people-making-snide-remarks-about-climate-change-are-punched-in-face
We are doomed. Resistance is futile. Resistance is futile! Resistance is FUTILE!!
We don’t have renewable energy – so we are doomed.
But if we had renewable energy, it would be worse.
The less expensive that renewable energy, the more doomed we will be.
because humans are incapable of change, incapable of making intelligent decisions, incapable of population control, incapable of reforming political or economic systems.
Meanwhile, back at the ranch, all we need to do is stop putting [CO2] in the air, and half the battle is won.
And then we would have TIME – generations – to reduce population even as we bring a higher standard of living to everyone, even as the Earth starts cool and habitats recover.
But, no…. let’s concentrate on how doomed we are, and how impossible it all is, instead. There’s a cunning plan, by gum.
What ARE you SMOKING up there in Vermont? You do show some small connection with reality when you say:
“…..humans are incapable of change, incapable of making intelligent decisions, incapable of population control, incapable of reforming political or economic systems”.
The evidence for that is all around us and can be found in any history book as well.
Yeah, “….all we need to do is stop putting [CO2] in the air, and HALF the battle is won”. (Care to tell us about the OTHER half of the battle?)
“And then we would have TIME – generations – to reduce population even as we bring a higher standard of living to everyone, even as the Earth starts (to) cool and habitats recover”. (That’s a voiceover while pictures of children, puppydogs, and beautiful landscapes play across the screen—-with “non-doomy” music in the background, of course).
“The evidence for that is all around us and can be found in any history book as well.”
History books are also filled with examples of the opposite of your overly-dark vision. Today’s newspapers are filled with examples. The glass is NOT empty. We are not doomed – although we face enormous challenges.
” (Care to tell us about the OTHER half of the battle?)”
yeah – it’s the next paragraph – reducing population levels with the luxury of the time we can enjoy once AGW is solved.
Enjoy your delusions. When do you think you’ll move beyond denial to the next stage?