Insight and inspiration in turbulent times.
This post from almost exactly 10 years ago is like a “report from the front” of my own thinking related to the question: How can Americans fall in love with limits the way we’ve fallen in love with freedom?” Our romance with freedom as entitlement, expansion, breaking (up, in, out), and, when you come right down to it, selfishness writ so large it’s sociopathy, is literally killing the web of life and the cohesion of societies.
It is in the other English tradition – a tradition starting with the Charter of the Forest, later championed by the Levellers, later by the Chartists and the Co-operatives, the trade unions and the original Labour Movement that brought us the Welfare State – a tradition of resistance to autocracy and privilege – and a tradition that one that can be championed without being compromised by imperialism and militarism. Secondly his new Charter would be a set of principles which, if implemented, would block the politics of Singapore on Thames
A meaningful strike in defence of the living world is, in part, a strike against the desire to raise our incomes and accumulate wealth: a desire shaped, more than we are probably aware, by dominant social and economic narratives. I see myself as striking in support of a radical and disturbing concept: enough.
The better that one understands a problem, the greater the chance of solving it. So it is with climate change, a crisis demanding far-reaching social transformation.
But just how far-reaching? A broad curriculum that develops activists’ clarity and unity of vision could be an essential pillar to advance the climate movement’s preparation, ambition, and cohesiveness.
If nothing else, the last few months have heightened awareness of the desperately parlous predicament that now faces humanity, with an accelerating climate and ecological crisis. So attempts to design assertive policy proposals are very welcome. The Green New Deal is the one that currently is getting the most attention and perhaps traction. So I want to ask some critical questions….
Vaclav Smil’s latest book explores growth in nature and society. It examines the rules and patterns of growth in four key domains, those of the living world; human energy consumption; human artifacts; and human populations, societies and economies.
Our civilization will eventually fail – through resource exhaustion, overreach, and hubris. The fact that many people counter that claim with the Panglossian insistence that we’ll think of something, that our technology will enable us to go on isolating ourselves from the laws of nature, is just proof of what I’m saying: a lack of exposure to the natural world makes humans stu– well, not as smart as we could be. And I predict that in the near future we will need to get smarter in a hurry.
We’ve begun to experience collapse in all spheres of life. Collapse can be both slow and rapid. It is a series of unending emergencies. Instead of responding or preparing, we’re cheering on a fight between fantasies.
There is a fundamental truth that these prophets of cutting-edge technology are not considering: fossil fuels are running out. It was inevitable that they would. Nothing that could only be created under unique conditions over millions of years can be expected to renew itself during the brief span of the Industrial Revolution.
How naive it is to think than the “New Green Deal” will allow us to continue our current lifestyles, just by other greener means. This, my friends in the developed, power and resource hogging countries is impossible.
There are certainly things that can be done to deal with the realities of stagnation and decline; some of them even involve adopting renewable energy technologies, on the one hand, or making sensible preparations for a range of non-apocalyptic but still serious troubles on the other.
It will not help you make friends among politicians if you make an argument about the inevitability of degrowth because politicians and senior civil servants and journalists are almost without exception true believers in the faith of growth.
