Insights From The Wilderness – Human Civilization Will Not Survive Climate Intensification
The possible future we create together cannot be the future that used to be. We cannot simply re-create the world we are living in today.
collapse of industrial civilization
Dealing With Collapse: The Seneca Strategy
The basic ideas in the behavior of complex systems are always the same, especially when dealing with collapses: complex systems are complex because they are dominated by the mechanism we call “feedback.”
Cultural Acedia: When We Can No Longer Care
You probably haven’t heard of the term acedia used, and it has several definitions, so I’ll start by defining it. It is a disillusioned detachment, disengagement or dissociation that stems from an incapacity to cope with the realities of the moment.
Global Civilisation to Descend into ‘Hell on Earth’ Unless we Choose a New Paradigm
Leggett’s insider observations vindicate the conclusion that humankind finds itself in the midst of an unprecedented civilisational ‘phase-shift’, in which we are witnessing the slow (and sometimes not so slow) implosion of the old industrial paradigm.
Extinction vs. Collapse
Climate twitter – the most fun twitter – has recently been reigniting the debate between human extinction and mere civilizational collapse, between doom and gloom, despair and (kind of) hope.
Love And Loss In The Anthropocene
Our insistence upon having everything has ironically set us upon a journey toward an era of great loss. Some of what we will have to relinquish is painfully clear already, as we see cities and small nations burn and/or wash away, as we find ourselves increasingly donning masks so as not to die of the very air we must breathe, as we find cesium 137 in our fish, RoundUp in our grains, microplastics in our waters. These are the obvious costs.
Getting Past Trump: This Is How Democracies Die (Part 1)
While I’m not prepared to make a prediction about Trump’s fate (there are just too many variables and unknowns), I have come to an unpleasant conclusion: While Trump will certainly be gone at some point — whether next month or years from now — we’re never going to return to the pre-Trump status quo.
A Review of Two Books by John Michael Greer: Dark Age America and The Retro Future
John Michael Greer acknowledges that his aim with Dark Age America is an ambitious one. The book is his attempt to sketch out the likely course of industrial society over the next 500 years, with a particular emphasis on the United States. These days, the word progress has come to mean deterioration far more often than improvement. This is the central tenet of The Retro Future,…
Organizing on a Sinking Ship: The Future of the Climate Justice Movement
As our planet rockets into a new geological epoch, we find ourselves on unfamiliar terrain. The only thing that is certain is that no one knows what will happen, and no one is in control. The rest of our lives will be defined by an exponential ecological entropy that will increasingly destabilize both the economic and political foundations upon which the modern world has been built. All bets are off. The collapse will be anything but boring.
Old Age and Societal Decline
People grow old and die. Civilizations eventually fail. For centuries amateur philosophers have used the former as a metaphor for the latter, leading to a few useful insights and just as many misleading generalizations. The comparison becomes more immediately interesting as our own civilization stumbles blindly toward collapse.
Finding Allies in the Anthropocene
There is a growing realization that despite what the champions of progress tell us, we can’t just grow and invent our way to plenty, and we can’t continue to ignore the disasters we’re inflicting on those who already suffer the most from our unrelenting demands on nature. And maybe this is not enough, but it is enough to keep trying.
What Will It Really Take to Avoid Collapse?
Fifteen thousand scientists have issued a dire warning to humanity about impending collapse but virtually no-one takes notice. Ultimately, our global systems, which are designed for perpetual growth, need to be fundamentally restructured to avoid the worst-case outcome.