The Chief Cause of Problems is Solutions

 

Coxhall Gardens, Carmel, Indiana

"The chief cause of problems is solutions."

Eric Sevareid said the title of this article on the CBS News on December 29, 1970. He was and is absolutely correct. Think of any problem we have and then think of what is typically proposed to solve that problem. Now, think about the long-term effects of that "solution" not just today or tomorrow, but over a period of 150 years. Very few solutions are without their perils as I have pointed out constantly here. Here is a more detailed look at why "solutions" are really just a form of bargaining. 

Let's go to one of the latest "solutions" and see what kinds of issues there might be. There is a new sub-series from Nate Hagens I'd like to highlight. It is part of his well-known video shorts that he does named Frankly. This new series is critical of the Just Stop Oil Movement, specifically for how the movement makes no real sense to anyone who understands the predicament we are actually part of. Just stop oil means stopping the energy that civilization rests and depends upon - do this and civilization also stops, meaning that 7 billion people and countless millions of other animal species die in rather short order. Needless to say, the movement is based upon what I would say is complete ignorance of reality and how not only the economy, but also how civilization itself operates. I really wanted to include this series in my last article, in an effort to highlight our lack of agency (once again). However, I decided that this deserved its own article to tease out the significance of the subject material and specific points made that demonstrate how we really have little choice/agency in most all of these movements that have popped up such as Degrowth, Transition Towns, Self-Sustaining Communities, 15-Minute Cities, and on and on. Every single one of them lacks a coherence of several simple facts as outlined below:

Number 1: Civilization itself is unsustainable, so different versions of the same basic system won't really help much if at all.

Number 2: We don't actually have the option to just stop extracting/distributing/using fossil hydrocarbon energy because ALL of our systems are built to use it. How would we transport the necessities of daily life? How would we grow and obtain our food? How would we power our hospitals, cities, water purification plants, sewer systems, and everything we require? The idea of "transitioning" our energy supplies mistakes how we power civilization as the issue when in reality it is civilization itself that is unsustainable - how we power it is irrelevant. That which is unsustainable CAN NOT BE SUSTAINED. 

Number 3: We don't really have the option of electrifying society like many people think we do because the energy and resources required for such a change do not exist in sufficient quantities within the timeframe required AND civilization will collapse before such a transition can be completed even if we tried to accomplish such a feat. Once again, HOW we power civilization is irrelevant as it will still be unsustainable regardless of source of energy.

Number 4: All the movements and ideas proposed to solve the predicaments we face make the assumption that these predicaments are actually problems with solutions rather than predicaments with outcomes. 

Number 5: Obfuscation and manipulation of popular narratives by the elite class to further their own agendas, generally having little or nothing to do with even minimally addressing root causes. 

I have been critical of these movements and so-called "solutions" for a long time due to the fact that no solutions exist because we don't have a problem here; we have a predicament (or set of predicaments) - ecological overshoot and its symptom predicaments. Not one of these ideas actually admits that it cannot solve what it claims to be able to solve and yet that is the real truth. Some of the movements are more honest once one looks at the fine print, but many omit such language in their marketing material. Once one also looks into the behind-the-scenes activities listed above in Number 5, one should realize that there are a huge number of foundations, think tanks, and other organizations designed to grab public and private money for programs and agendas which will not reduce overshoot or any of its symptom predicaments but instead go to enriching the people behind these groups, most often by selling technology or ideas that actually takes society in the wrong direction.

Chris Martenson wrote a book in 2012 titled The Crash Course: The Unsustainable Future of Our Economy, Energy, and Environment which contains this summary of chapter 8, quote:

"This chapter indicates the difference between problem and predicament. The distinction boils down to this: problems have solutions; predicaments have outcomes. A solution to a problem fixes it, returning all to its original condition. Once a suitable solution can be found and made to work, a problem can be solved. A predicament, by contrast, has no solution. Faced with a predicament, people can develop responses, but not solutions. Those responses may succeed, they may fail, or they may fall somewhere in between, but no response can erase a predicament. Predicaments have outcomes that can be managed, but circumstances cannot be returned to their original state. This chapter pinpoints the need to identify predicaments such as depletion of energy and hence the focus of efforts should be on managing the outcome."

OK, getting to the actual videos is important in order to comprehend more precisely the actual details and why this movement (Just Stop Oil), similar to so many others, lacks any real comprehension of the long-term consequences of said movement. 

Part 1 is a rather short start to the series at less than 10 minutes and Nate explains why less gasoline usage or demand will not result in less demand for oil.

Part 2 is considerably longer (just under 32 minutes) and explains the fact that fossil hydrocarbons are central and essential to not only our economies, but to civilization itself and our daily lives. The idea that we can choose to stop using oil is faulty logic coming from an ignorance to how civilization actually works. This link is specifically set to begin at the 6 minute mark for a reason; to highlight a particular fact that Nate got wrong when he made the video that I am correcting here. He says in the video that the massive increase in total mammalian biomass "isn't due to technology," but in fact technology is PRECISELY what has allowed for this increase. Without technology we would have never had the ability to extract all this fossil hydrocarbon energy in the first place (let alone burn it in all our engines and modern technological devices).

Part 3 is about the same length as Part 2 at about 28 minutes. This episode goes into details on the "four horsemen of the 2020s" and the complexities of our global systems.

Part 4 concludes the mini-series with this description, quote: 

"In Part 4 of this Frankly mini-series, Nate concludes the deep dive into the nexus between “just stopping oil” and “just pumping oil” with 10 guideposts which might help us to navigate through the intersection of the Four Horsemen of the 2020s and the shrinking Web of Life….together known as The Great Simplification. From decomplexifying at various scales to a change of consciousness arising from more humans focused on "Inner Tech", there are many ways we as individuals and as a part of the greater society can manage the push and pull of both environment and economic issues while remaining grounded in the reality of energy, technology, behavior, and the economy."

All in all, Nate's series is greatly appreciated to reduce the ignorance accompanying many of these movements which make said movements either impossible or highly unlikely to be achieved. Still, he also came out with this episode of Reality Roundtable with Nora Bateson, William E. Rees, and Rex Weyler last month as well, which I recommend just as much as the Frankly series.

Speaking of William Rees, he just came out with a new paper with this abstract, quote:

"Homo sapiens has evolved to reproduce exponentially, expand geographically, and consume all available resources. For most of humanity’s evolutionary history, such expansionist tendencies have been countered by negative feedback. However, the scientific revolution and the use of fossil fuels reduced many forms of negative feedback, enabling us to realize our full potential for exponential growth. This natural capacity is being reinforced by growth-oriented neoliberal economics—nurture complements nature. Problem: the human enterprise is a ‘dissipative structure’ and sub-system of the ecosphere—it can grow and maintain itself only by consuming and dissipating available energy and resources extracted from its host system, the ecosphere, and discharging waste back into its host. The population increase from one to eight billion, and >100-fold expansion of real GWP in just two centuries on a finite planet, has thus propelled modern techno-industrial society into a state of advanced overshoot. We are consuming and polluting the biophysical basis of our own existence. Climate change is the best-known symptom of overshoot, but mainstream ‘solutions’ will actually accelerate climate disruption and worsen overshoot. Humanity is exhibiting the characteristic dynamics of a one-off population boom–bust cycle. The global economy will inevitably contract and humanity will suffer a major population ‘correction’ in this century."

Once again, the theme of this article is pointed out. Still, millions of people buy into these ideas thinking that if more people just join in or if we all just start now that somehow disaster will be avoided. Of course, it's easy to think that everyone will want to join into doing what's right or doing what is necessary or doing what our tribe agrees with. Very few stop to consider how other tribes think, or what other people think is necessary, or even what constitutes doing "what is right" and whether or not one wants to join into doing it. How we should act does not dictate how we do act. Remember that we are a rationalizing species, not a rational one. Basically, these types of ideas that are being sold as "solutions" amount to pure hopium. Even James Hansen is calling out fake claims here, quote: 

"[Political leaders at the United Nations COP (Conference of the Parties) meetings give the impression that progress is being made and it is still feasible to limit global warming to as little as 1.5°C. That is pure, unadulterated, hogwash, as exposed by minimal understanding of Fig. 6 here and Fig. 27 in reference 6. It is important that the remarkable observations that allowed construction of Fig. 6 are continued and improved – which is a greater challenge than governments may be aware of. Precise observations are needed from space and throughout the global ocean.]"

Yet, despite Hansen's calling out political leaders, he is still talking about "solutions" to the "problem" and "restoring a propitious climate," not yet admitting that it's a predicament with an outcome and that "restoring the climate system to what previously existed" is not something that is going to happen today, tomorrow, or most likely within the lifetime of anyone who is alive today, because it can not and will not happen on human timescales. Most likely the changes we have promulgated will require tens of thousands of years if not hundreds of thousands or even millions of years to bring stability back to the system. I've brought much of this to light in my article about denial of reality and Hansen is just replicating the follow-up article to that topic, optimism bias.

Going just a bit further, however, is this article from last year by Tom Murphy, who points to our lack of agency in all of this, quote:

"In this light, we can see that we never sat around a table and debated whether to use fire, agriculture, science, fossil fuels, technology, or capitalism. Sure, we had discussions, and may fool ourselves into thinking we were in control—yet another facet of our human exceptionalism. But it wasn’t a true choice, in that those opting out are either gone or not faring well in our current global civilization. So it can seem in hindsight like a series of deliberate moves that put us on the “right” track—where “right” just means “current,” possibly translating to “disastrous.”

Yet, based on the obligate nature of all these branches, we actually had little or no agency in their outcomes. It’s as if floating on a raft on a stream that joins a larger river and asking which way to go at the juncture. All the forces point downstream. A raft deciding to hold steady or struggle upstream risks foundering, while those who “decide” to go downstream can congratulate themselves all they want, but really have nothing to do with how easily the transition was accomplished: it hardly could have succeeded any other way."

Tom's article has a new, updated version on Resilience here. His article is rather similar to my article on how we arrived here, inspired by a different author, Peter Russell. At the end of Tom's original article are a few really great comments, where denial of denial is brought up. I really see no way to eradicate denial of denial, as this amounts to yet another predicament for which does not have a solution but instead has an outcome as highlighted here by Iain McGilchrist. Attempting to eradicate denial of denial is like playing whack-a-mole because it is a natural defense mechanism that makes us who we are. It isn't much different than attempting to eliminate the Maximum Power Principle as a biological imperative. 

Perhaps denial of denial represents itself best when we refuse to accept what is, and attempt to exert command and control over it (whatever "is" and "it" may be). When it comes to changing the essence of who and what we are as a species, I remain skeptical. Behavior change is exceedingly difficult for most people and while it is possible for perhaps a few qualities of our behavior, changing the entire paradigm is going to take quite some time - at least a generation or two. This is longer than we most likely have to make the changes, so the changes will be made for us by nature instead, limiting our abilities to continue behaving in the old ways.

Hopefully I have provided some really great ideas to consider here. Maybe the constant search for solutions is precisely the problem that needs to be fixed. Then again, perhaps this is just more denial of denial and remains a predicament with an outcome and not something that can be "fixed".