The "Solution" Obsession

 

Picture of Table Rock Mountain in South Carolina taken from Bald Ridge Heritage Preserve

"One of the penalties of an ecological education is that one lives alone in a world of wounds. Much of the damage inflicted on the land is quite invisible to laymen. An ecologist must either harden his shell and make believe that the consequences of science are none of his business, or he must be the doctor who sees the marks of death in a community that believes itself well and does not want to be told otherwise."  ~ Aldo Leopold

The obsession over "solutions" never seems to go away. I've detailed many times over the past (almost 4 years now) precisely why what we face is a set of symptom predicaments under a root predicament. The root predicament (not problem) is ecological overshoot, and symptom predicaments are items such as climate change, pollution loading, energy and resource decline (aka peak oil), biodiversity loss, extinction, and all other environmental issues that are typically called "problems" but which in reality have no solutions because they aren't actually problems. We like to think that we have solutions by applying science to utilize technology to solve problems; and for things that are, in actuality, problems, it is possible to solve them in a reductionistic manner by ignoring the environmental degradation that comes along with building such technology, operating it, maintaining the infrastructure supporting it, and decommissioning said technology at the end of its service life and either scrapping it or replacing it. But while the original problem may appear to have been solved, brand new problems or even predicaments spring up in its place as a result of this process. This is why so-called "solutions" are really nothing more than bargaining. More often than not, they are bargaining to maintain civilization. 

Because civilization is unsustainable, attempting to maintain it is not only impossible, but foolhardy as well. Industrial civilization is collapsing as I write this, although since collapse is a long process and not an overnight event, we can expect it to limp along for quite some time yet, possibly another quarter century.

Much of this has to do with optimism bias and denial of reality  -  not being able to see technology from a complete perspective instead of seeing only its positive attributes. 

So, I've repeated everything I've already said here many times. Tom Murphy has a new video series (here's the first one) he is doing on Youtube, and it goes into great detail about all of this. William E. Rees has painstakingly said this many, many, many times as well and lays everything out in less than 8 minutes right here. I could go on and on, but needless to say, it really is way past time to move towards acceptance of actuality and stop with the magical thinking. Last week I delved into Rees' article on Resilience. He pointed to a possibility of a political solution. There are no political solutions and never will be. The system is not set up for reality. It is set up to tell people what they want to hear. Telling people things doesn't actually accomplish anything and because we don't truly live in democracies, but in oligarchies, where the corporations more or less dictate the system, politicians can make whatever claims they want. If the corporations don't like it (whatever "it" may be), then it just isn't going to happen. 

Once again, as much as I hate saying it (because I don't like the implications any more than anyone else does), we lack agency. This idea that we actually have control is almost hilarious. Before we built all these systems of civilization that require energy and resource throughput just to maintain themselves, perhaps we did have a modicum of control. We could limit ourselves, which before we worshipped technology use, actually had an effect. But now that we depend upon civilization for our living arrangements, in order to keep the water and sewage and gas and electricity and internet service and TV and radio stations and traffic and business and food and garbage collection flowing, these systems require a massive amount of energy to maintain. These systems cannot just be "stopped" all of a sudden in order to discontinue using fossil fuels because everyone depends upon them. I pointed much of this out in this article, but many people still believe in the fairy tale story of electrification which really changes nothing. It doesn't make life more sustainable; in fact, it only doubles down on unsustainability - attempting to power civilization by alternate means. When one realizes the truth about the electrical grid, the whole idea of trying to build out a new system guaranteed to fail seems quite ludicrous. 

Unfortunately, that is what all these "solutions" are about - attempting to maintain the civilization we are all embedded within which can't be maintained. Even degrowth advocates want to try incrementalism to resolve the issues we face. I'll give them credit, at least they aren't pushing for more growth (generally speaking). Many of them still aren't ready to begin reducing their use of technology, and that is where the whole idea pretty much fails, unfortunately. What most people think of degrowth is that they will simply use a little less or cut out a few things here and there. They don't appear to understand that their entire lifestyle will turned upside down and inside out. Because society didn't do this 50 years ago, the situation has only grown exponentially worse. Collapse was always a given, even back then. A species cannot go into overshoot and NOT collapse. Despite that simple fact, here we go again with yet another book about "fixing" civilization and (*cough*) "making it sustainable." I guess I won't waste my time reading that one. I will, however, give them kudos for bringing ideas to the forefront on how to bring light to the issue of sustainability, as I do think highlighting these things at least gets folks to think about them; even if based on faulty premises.

Here's yet another prime example of more hype about electrification and non-renewable "renewable" devices. The post is password protected because why? Going to their Facebook page brings up this video. I expect those links to rot fairly quickly, so don't be surprised if they don't go anywhere. This is the intro for the video, quote:

"Coming this Thursday! #REPowerAfrika is igniting a movement, connecting regional community #RenewableEnergy projects across Africa.
We're calling on financiers and governments to ramp up investments in affordable, clean energy for all, especially for those on the frontlines of the climate and energy crisis.

Stay tuned to witness the beginning of a Pan-African renewable energy movement and register for the launch in our link:
https://t.co/8j5f1P3F5R"

Color me surprised that when I go to their website, the very first thing I am bombarded with is their fundraising efforts:

Accepting that people are going to believe what they want to believe regardless if those beliefs are possible or not, I have to simply walk away from magical and wishful thinking. The belief that humans can "fix" what we have screwed up is at odds with reality in my mind. It really is reductionism at its finest. Take a look at lands that used to be forest and turned into agricultural land. Nature abhors a vacuum, so if the land is left alone, eventually it will become forest again provided climate change doesn't render the area a desert (a definite probability in arid regions). Still, the soil that once existed there will take a long time to be like it was before the trees were all cut down and the land cleared and plowed. Generally, the trees will require around half a century to have the same carbon sequestering ability that the previous forest had before it was cut down. This is if most of the trees survive, which is highly unlikely. I wrote this article about trees quite some time back, and it delineates how trees will never be able to sequester enough carbon to overcome anthropocentric emissions, never mind emissions from positive feedback mechanisms such as methane from reservoirs, permafrost, wildfires, and hydrates. Needless to say, while we can do things to improve the quality and biodiversity of the soil, it is highly unlikely that said soil will ever contain all of the qualities that it had before we started screwing around with it thinking that we knew best what was needed with agriculture. We were reminded by Carl Sagan about belief:

Sagan also reminded us of charlatans:

Moving on, I understand the obsession with "solutions" as I see articles like this frequently. Here was my intro for it:

Quote: "Researchers from the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI) and its partners, noted that, to their knowledge, the 2022 event was the largest HAB event documented in polar waters to be caused by the single-celled organism Alexandrium catenella, which produces neurotoxins called paralytic shellfish toxins (PSTs).

Toxins produced by this organism as it proliferates or "blooms" can accumulate in organisms that consume the algae, and the toxins can then be transferred through the food web, causing illness or mortality of marine animals and potentially fatal Paralytic Shellfish Poisoning (PSP) in people who eat contaminated seafoods.

The bloom of Alexandrium stretched at least 600 kilometers (~370 miles) from the northern Bering Sea to the southern Chukchi Sea at its peak. While concentrations of A. catenella in excess of 1,000 cells per liter are considered dangerous, the measured maximum concentrations in this bloom exceeded 174,000 cells per liter—a record breaker for Arctic waters. In addition, the high toxicity of the Alexandrium cells compounded the poisoning risk from the bloom, according to the researchers."

That is a very high level of toxicity. The rest of the article is just as alarming, and this is but one of many, many symptom predicaments. As is pointed out in the article, the toxins are eaten by small marine organisms and move right up the food chain. This same scenario repeats itself with pollutants such as PFAS, PFOS, microplastics, and all sorts of other chemicals and concoctions we have manufactured. So I get that people are worried, and they have every right to be. Because we are suffering from overshoot, however, we must do things that reduce overshoot rather than increase it. Anything that promotes technology, technology use, or civilization is going the wrong way, because those types of ideas will increase overshoot rather than reduce it. This is precisely why governments and politicians utterly have no agency to be able to help in tackling overshoot because to do so means the end of their careers, their jobs, and everything that made them who they now are. I will leave you with this wonderful piece:

THE MOMENT

The moment when, after many years

of hard work and a long voyage

you stand in the centre of your room,

house, half-acre, square mile, island, country,

knowing at last how you got there,

and say, "I own this,"

is the same moment when the trees unloose 

their soft arms from around you,

the birds take back their language,

the cliffs fissure and collapse,

the air moves back from you like a wave

and you can't breathe.

"No," they whisper. "You own nothing.

You were a visitor, time after time

climbing the hill, planting the flag, proclaiming.

We never belonged to you.

You never found us. 

It was always the other way round."

~ Margaret Atwood

Much to think about and consider there. Let's quit wasting time and energy looking for so-called "solutions" (enshittification) and instead get busy figuring out how to live in a sustainable manner, knowing full well that we cannot escape the consequences of overshoot. Until next time, Live Now!

 

P.S. Like my pictures? See my latest entry here on that front.