Bargaining to Maintain Civilization

Happy Winter/Summer Solstice!!

As anyone reading my articles often already knows, ecological overshoot is the master predicament causing many different symptom predicaments. I constantly see many people blaming emissions or greed or capitalism or governments or oil companies or fossil fuels (and on and on...) for causing climate change (or their favorite symptom predicament). Playing the blame game gets us nowhere though, and unfortunately, it is also far more complicated than that. Reducing emissions is a great idea (NOT a solution as noted below in the new paper from James Hansen), but it cannot be accomplished without reducing ecological overshoot because ecological overshoot is precisely what is CAUSING emissions. Ecological overshoot is caused by technology use, which means that it is being caused by our behavior. In order to reduce emissions, there is no other choice than to reduce technology use. This requires changing our behaviors. Most emissions historically have been produced by Western Society, so Western Society must change the most in how we behave. This is not optional. If we don't change our behavior, nature will solve the predicament for us by removing habitat that we require in order to continue surviving. This is the outcome for that scenario - extinction. Of course, inherent here is that infamous "we" which brings the good ole' lack of agency into the mix. More on our lack of agency can also be found here.

Now, this is the background to what I am writing about. While my articles here have just been recently introduced to society at large, I've actually been conversing about this and writing about it far longer in several different groups, many of which I'm no longer a member of. Why am I no longer a member in these groups one may ask. Because those groups feature and promote a mental defect known as wetiko, and they refuse to accept the truth that ecological overshoot and its symptom predicaments are not problems with solutions. In other words, they suffer from the illusion of control. Most of them are busy promoting technofixes which will never solve anything (there are no technofixes - technology use is what has CAUSED ecological overshoot, so it can not and will not solve ["fix"] anything) - or they are constantly trying to get folks to purchase EVs, solar panels, wind turbines, or other technological devices which only further exacerbate the situation and continue the same ongoing destruction that brought us to this point in time to begin with. Climate change cannot be "separated" from ecological overshoot because overshoot is what is causing it. So, eating different kinds of foods or avoiding meat, taking shorter showers, driving and/or flying less, buying different kinds of things ("organic" or "green" or "sustainable" or "clean" products) and other types of gimmicks won't generally help to reduce overshoot, which, when reduced, will concomitantly reduce emissions and climate change, pollution loading, and energy and resource decline, among other symptom predicaments of overshoot. This is because we lack agency to make everybody follow these same behaviors, and as such, universal cooperation is not possible. In order to accomplish reducing overshoot, EVERYBODY must reduce technology use. It doesn't really help for folks to recommend using devices which use less energy or resources unless everybody else is also using those same devices, and this is nothing more than a stopgap measure because at some point, the energy to power those devices will also be depleted, making them obsolete and useless. We cannot use technology if we don't have habitat, which technology use is destroying. We are not above nature; we are a part of it.

This is a huge issue because anything which serves to continue industrial civilization simply delays the coming changes necessary and steepens the Seneca Cliff we are jumping off of. It matters not one bit how the electricity we use is generated nor how much electricity can be generated because electricity generation in and of itself is unsustainable. Continuing to use it only furthers the destruction as industrial civilization collapses. Very few people I have spoken with realize this; nor are they willing to give it (electricity) up. Recently, talk about fusion has cranked back up, but this is something which has historically always been two or three decades into the future since the 1950s. The claims that they had a net energy gain are also false, quote:

"If gain meant producing more output energy than input electricity, however, NIF fell far short. Its lasers are inefficient, requiring hundreds of megajoules of electricity to produce the 2 MJ of laser light and 3 MJ of fusion energy. Moreover, a power plant based on NIF would need to raise the repetition rate from one shot per day to about 10 per second. One million capsules a day would need to be made, filled, positioned, blasted, and cleared away—a huge engineering challenge."

Here's a video explaining why there was no net energy gain despite the hype. Even if commercial fusion was an actual possibility (which would be yet another two or three decades into the future), none of this would help the predicament of ecological overshoot - it would only worsen the predicament because energy use facilitated by technology is precisely what is CAUSING overshoot. The hype that fusion is "clean" energy and requires no fossil fuels is patently false.

I have written about practically all of this before (as can be seen by the large number of links I have inserted into this article which are mostly previous articles of mine) - the impossibility of us to be able to wiggle our way out of who and what we are as a species. But I am in the process of including yet more external material here in this blog within the pages section (see Table of Contents) in order to be able to link to this material that is so key to the predicaments focused on here. Hopefully this will provide readers with the ability to point others to these pages and articles so that they, too, can understand and fully comprehend where we are and what the outcome will be. As long as we attempt to continue the system of civilization (which is unsustainable - meaning that it cannot be sustained), we are planning to fail and guaranteeing our extinction. Before I continue, here is an excellent and through description of precisely what civilization is. I must caution readers that the concepts disclosed are not comfortable thoughts to sit with. Very little in this blog IS comforting. It's very similar to the peeling of an onion, where there is constantly yet another layer to uncover, the whole while causing discomfort and bringing tears to one's eyes. 

As I bring all of this to an early conclusion (yes, there's still more), the whole reason behind this post (in the paragraph below) and the necessity to point all of this out again is the constant stream of bargaining I see going on around me. Greta Thunberg is now supporting nuclear power in an effort to stop coal usage, but there seems to be a huge disconnect between the idealism represented there and the reality on the ground with regard to coal usage worldwide, not just for electrical power but also for industrial manufacturing and production. Germany is only one country and their emissions aren't even in the top five by country! (As of the date of this article, the top five are: China, United States, India, Russia, and Japan.)

The reason for this post is the fear expressed by climate scientists in Australia, although I'm certain that this extends far beyond Australia. As mentioned above, even the scientists are mostly bargaining - attempting to reduce emissions without tackling ecological overshoot. Reducing emissions REQUIRES reducing ecological overshoot, period. I find it odd that more scientists aren't calling for this. I see only a handful of people worldwide calling to reduce it. The broad majority continue harping on about CO2 emissions while said emissions continue skyrocketing. This really stymies me since the conclusions I routinely harp on about myself appear so clearly once a person understands these concepts. While I understand that there is no way out of the upcoming train wreck unfolding, surely we could reduce the harm by reducing technology use. Very few people are calling for such a program, however. Our future is decay, regardless of how or what we do. I know that this sounds bleak, but all of my research indicates that we are rapidly running out of cans to kick down the road and indeed running out of road as well. 

Despite recent optimistic claims by some climate scientists, the news just really isn't all that great. This quote extracted from the abstract of this paper by James Hansen and 14 other scientists tells the story:

"Eventual global warming due to today's GHG forcing alone -- after slow feedbacks operate -- is about 10°C."

Simon Michaux has quite a few different articles out regarding the issue of "mineral blindness" in conjunction with energy and resource decline. I've written about him in the past and this article continues much of what his research indicates - that growth is over and that we need to look at the predicament of ecological overshoot in a whole new way. He also has a new video with Nate Hagens about the "Arcadians," one of the types of groups of folks he claims society is organized into. The one thing both Simon and Nate understand is that "green energy" will not reduce ecological overshoot or stop climate change. They are attempting to have the same discussion many others are also beginning to finally have - to develop a way forward from here. 

My concern, as noted above, is that most all means of addressing the real issue - the predicament of ecological overshoot - is to address and/or solve symptom predicaments instead which doesn't/don't address the real issue(s). Overshoot is unsustainable. Civilization and technology use cause overshoot. I linked this paper quite some time ago and it is still relevant today. When will society begin the difficult transition to dismantling civilization and technology use? The longer the bargaining continues, the more severe the outcome will be as nature takes more and more of both away from us. 

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