One pill

 makes  you small

     -Jefferson Airplane

We've been so busy, keeping up with the Jones's

Four car garage and were still building on

  -Waylon Jennings (Luckenbach Texas)

Greetings

       

       I always enjoy reading Eric Lindberg.  He is what i would call a thoughtful, hopefull, realist.  He's been doing a series of pieces about the Transition Movement, trying to come up with a model that has real staying power,  rather than some effort to deal with this or that crisis .   His latest is to use a sort of Earth Religion model, noting that churches, like political parties (and corporations) have long lives. And if the associated humans are inspired by the philosophies, they will be willing to work for long term goals , which may never be achieved during their lifetimes .  See. Here

       One part of that struck me was his description of the the appropriate  long term goal.  Is it "green growth", or "sustainable growth"?   It is not.  In fact, Lindberg says,  only radical simplicity can deal with the damage that has been done and continues to be done.  Green growth provides only "improved means towards an unimproved end"

"To put it a bit too glibly, Transition says that since the only way to keep your Netflix up-and-running is, in fact, to blow the tops of mountains, create underground earthquakes and poison our groundwater, or cover every acre of the Earth’s surface with wind turbines and solar panels, then we’d better re-evaluate our values and choose a way of life that allows us to live safely within the Earth’s biological and ecological limits, even if that means we end up living a lot more like Ecuadorian peasants or the Amish than middle-class Americans who manage global complexity from our glimmering offices.  If we have to relinquish our Netflix and smart phones, our European vacations and air-conditioned homes, so be it.  Humanity has managed just fine without any of these throughout most of its history, a history we are taught to view with dismay and pity according to an educational perspective that is aimed at maintaining the beliefs and practices necessary for industrial progress and expansion.

He goes to explain in more detail.

"The goal of environmentalism is of course to “save the Earth” or “save Humanity.”  These are not bad goals, per se, but in the hands of liberal environmentalists they are misguided in a number of ways.  The most critical error is the almost-never-questioned belief that saving humanity or the Earth actually means preserving our high-energy way of life, hopefully without destroying our common home’s current ecological balance in the process.  This will be done, we are told, by trading in our coal-powered electrical generation for wind and solar, while swapping-out our internal combustion engines for the electric ones we might plug into our new carbon-free energy system.  Add in some Silicon Valley wizardry, and (so the story goes) we can make this all operate at a level of efficiency that will presumably also help us manage forests, stop soil erosion, preserve biodiversity and habitat, while we continue to grow the economy so that free-market democracy (one without any rationing or reinstitution of virtues such as temperance or moderation) can continue on its merry way, offering us a future that looks like the present, only in real-time higher resolution.

'I can’t help but wonder whether I should laugh or cry when I hear or read about the so-called people’s climate march or about most[ii] environmental protesters in general — the sort who might follow the increasingly misguided (and misleading) false prophecy of the likes of Bill McKibben, Al Gore, or Leonardo Di Caprio.  For at root, they are in effect protesting one form of energy collection and delivery in favor of a different one.  It is presented as a great struggle over values and vision, though it is not.  If there is faith at stake in the prevailing struggle (and I believe there is) it is a fully shared faith in progress struggling only over esoteric theological details, practical differences between fossil fuels and renewable energy notwithstanding.  True each side draws upon differing versions of capitalism and Liberal democracy and some (not entirely unimportant) symbolic and aesthetic differences. And it is also true that many environmentalists love and cherish nature in some way or another and would like to see it preserved.  But unquestioned in mainstream environmental movements are the more fundamental values surrounding the quest for mastery and domination over the Earth’s natural systems; the pursuit of comfort, entertainment, and novelty; the securing of safety and convenience in the face of all the ravages of time and, ultimately, death.  All we see are slightly differing versions of salvation through conquest and mastery.

        This view is supported by this piece by Jason Hickel, which I think lays out the problem with the green growth argument  in the context of climate change   Those who support green growth argue that the trick is to reduce "carbon intensity ", that is the a mount of carbon per unit of GDP.  And carbon intensity has and will go down as we use more efficient devices, such as EVS , and more low carbon energy sources.  Carbon intensity is falling, at a rate 1.9%.    When you compare this rate with the over all growth rate of 3%, you can see that it is swimming against the tide (although estimated carbon emission numbers are flat ).   More importantly though, even if even if carbon intensity were equal to GDP growth, there is no actual reduction in carbon.  Compare it to the reductions needed of 8-10%, it barely moves the needle .  Se also Carbon intensity needs to fall at 6% each yr (Vox).  Although Hickel doesn't speak in terms of returning to a peasant lifestyle, he admits that the no growth option is a "hard pill to swallow"  He argues that maybe we won't have to actually get rid of stuff, just stop buying more.

    

        Of course it is important to remember that  climate change isn't the only concern .  It is merely one symptom.   Here's an interesting column from Geoge Monbiot, who argues that climate change is not the worlds most most pressing environmental problem.  Its only number 3. He ranks first , the "systematic ecological collapse" caused by industrial fishing.  Second , he puts the erasure of non-human life on land due to industrial farming.   For instance the drop in insect populations..     see Here   (H/t Sara D).

"The abundance of flying insects has plunged by three-quarters over the past 25 years, according to a new study that has shocked scientists.

"Insects make up about two-thirds of all life on Earth [but] there has been some kind of horrific decline,” said Prof Dave Goulson of Sussex University, UK, and part of the team behind the new study. “We appear to be making vast tracts of land inhospitable to most forms of life, and are currently on course for ecological Armageddon. If we lose the insects then everything is going to collapse.”

           see also this recent UN report on pollinators.

         For the bigger picture, its useful to turn to Elizabeth Kolbert who wrote the book, The sixth Extinction which won the 2015 Pulizer Prize.   Here is her presentation at the Johnathon Schell memorial lecture.  (described by Dave Roberts as  "bracing and free of false-hope homilies".     Here is an interesting interview she did with Dave Roberts.   Its a free ranging discussion going from science to ethics.

  Will humans also, go extinct?  She's not sure.

 "But while we’ve increased our numbers, it has been at the expense of other things. We are simply consuming other species. We are consuming a tremendous amount of the primary productivity of the oceans, for example, just emptying them out.

And so there’s two questions really, it seems to me. One is will humanity make it through this basically unrestrained growth, both in terms of numbers and in how much we as individuals consume? And meanwhile, what happens to everything else?

The answer is not necessarily the same. I mean, humanity has found that it can reproduce and consume at a very rapid rate and, depending on how you look at it, the world continues apace — though obviously many people are not doing well, many people are.

But most other species are not doing too well.

She concludes the interview in this way.

David Roberts

One thing I always appreciated about your writing is your tragic imagination. I feel like lots of folks in the climate discussion lack that. [When author David Wallace-Wells wrote a story on the tragic potential of climate change, he was roundly scolded by the climate positivity police.]

Elizabeth Kolbert

I really appreciate that. Thank you.

David Roberts

American culture, in particular, lacks a tragic imagination — an ability to imagine that things can go horribly wrong.

Elizabeth Kolbert

I completely agree with you. That’s the only way we can explain what’s going on right now.

A couple years ago, we lived in Rome for a year. In Rome, you are surrounded by the ruins of a civilization. You don’t have the same our-best-days-are-ahead-of-us nonsense.

                So, we can only hope that some sort of Earth religion, or new philosophy will become dominant, before things get too bad.   Others argue that such a philosophy may occur, but only after  some sort of economic crash.  For an interesting "post crash" approach,, em-phasizing a sort of "gift economy", I would recommend a look at Lean Logic -A Dictionary of the Future and How to survive it.  Or the shorter and more readable Surviving the Future.

             In the shorter term,  it appears that simplicity is the only way out, as this piece by Ted trainer explains