What WON'T Happen?
Looking into the distance at Cloudland Canyon State Park
From my perspective, it is important to remove any attachment to outcome from many (but not all) of the activities one engages in, as most of these activities tend to be goal-oriented, and most of the long-term goals many set about with regard to the predicaments we face are unachievable. Short-term goals have a greater chance of success, so perhaps maintaining attachment to those goals might be more prudent.
As for things that won't happen, one of them is for large cities to continue. It is guaranteed that all large cities will cease to exist once the energy and resources to sustain them disappears. William E. Rees writes in an insightful article, quote:
"The world is in a genuine predicament, trapped between the toughest of rocks and most unyielding of hard places — decisive action would destroy the world as we know it; inaction could destroy the world as we know it. Predicaments have no solution, only outcomes. From this perspective, contrary to mainstream projections, the sun may well be setting on the era of urbanisation—how can anyone think seriously that, in present circumstances, we can build out cities to accommodate sustainably an additional two billion people? (Using what source of energy?) Devoid of cheap energy, cut off from vital supplies, economically drained, and hammered by extreme weather events, even existing large cities and megacities can only contract or be abandoned. Many will not survive the end of the century. Domestic chaos and widespread geopolitical conflict seems inevitable."
What does this portend? Well, for one, people will filter out of cities as time moves forward into increasingly rural areas, overwhelming infrastructural systems in those areas. As is typical within the confines of civilization, little planning or foresight generally takes place ahead of such predicaments. Most of the current set of plans for most locations both urban and rural are woefully behind the times and still flow according to 20th century principles for the most part. This means that the focus is still on growth rather than degrowth and contraction. Understanding that civilization is going away means that pretty much everything we take for granted today is slowly disappearing. What will we miss?
This is precisely why what we have here is a paradox, and one of the reasons why I am so passionate about explaining our lack of agency in an effort to get people to realize that even with our best efforts, it simply won't be enough to overcome the forces made up by those who won't help or contribute, combined with the inertia and collapse that started several decades ago.
Why I constantly harp about folks to "Live Now" is so they will focus on the things that are most meaningful to them, that bring them joy, and help them attain a sense of gratefulness for what they have today. This is the opposite of "hoping for a future that cannot be."
I know many folks focused on "restoring nature" or different conservation efforts in order to increase biodiversity. Many people are focusing on permaculture or regenerative agriculture in an effort to replace industrially-produced food and also to provide a means for survival to their children and/or possibly grandchildren. These are still workable ideas at this time. But they are just for today - they will not remain that way, which is precisely why I continue discussing acceptance of the predicaments we face rather than thinking that somehow we will overcome or avoid the outcomes of said predicaments. Avoiding the outcomes are not on the menu, unfortunately. Nature is in charge here, not us. Just ask the folks whose neighborhoods got vaporized in Los Angeles. Ask the people in North Carolina whose towns were washed downstream in the historic floods. Ask farmers who lost their crops this year or even last year due to drought, flooding, hurricanes, insects, and other disasters. Ask people who have lost loved ones to diseases being amplified by these predicaments. Ask couples who have tried to get pregnant to have children who couldn't afford to pay out-of-pocket expenses for IVF treatments. All this and more is coming, and we do not have agency to avoid them.
If listeria bacteria can already hide inside romaine lettuce, what other kinds of toxins/pathogens can hide inside of other foods? How will climate change make this situation worse? I wish I had time to research this scenario more, but there is already more than sufficient evidence to demonstrate that agriculture will continue to diminish from this point forward. I have tried diligently to bring awareness to this issue by pointing to many different symptom predicaments of ecological overshoot, yet there still appear to be many people who haven't really done their homework in this regard and have bought into the stream of hopium that pervades the space within the overshoot community.
Speaking of hopium, I recently came across an article titled, Demolishing the Billionaire Scam where the author suggests that "if we play the game correctly" (among other suggestions) that some sort of better outcome can be had. I disagree, as this article is based not on a holistic assessment of overshoot but that of a symptom or two of it instead. It ignores climate change and other existential risks such as pollution loading. While I agree with his synopsis in the many areas that he brings up, the assessment he provides is incomplete at best.
From my perspective, and knowing that overshoot always ends in collapse, I don't see a "better future" that I see so often discussed. Our future is going to suck, and how we play the game isn't going to make that big of a difference, if any at all.
The person who originally posted that article claimed that this author has wisdom and love to share. My take on it is that this author has an ignorance that makes what he is sharing not love and wisdom, but cruelty; dangling this "better future" in front of folks who don't know that no such future is possible.
From my perspective, and knowing that overshoot always ends in collapse, I don't see a "better future" that I see so often discussed. Our future is going to suck, and how we play the game isn't going to make that big of a difference, if any at all.
The person who originally posted that article claimed that this author has wisdom and love to share. My take on it is that this author has an ignorance that makes what he is sharing not love and wisdom, but cruelty; dangling this "better future" in front of folks who don't know that no such future is possible.
People need to seriously get out of mindset that there is "a way to make things better." While one might be able to make things less bad, this doesn't equate to better - decline is inevitable, meaning that today is the best day of the rest of your life, period. How do I know this? Simply look at the trajectories of the Great Acceleration and analyze what they tell us. How about the concentration of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere, for starters. How about the exponentially increasing wildfires for another. The thought that somewhere safe exists is yet another myth. Something that rarely comes up is the myth of nuclear safety, which will become less and less safe as time moves forward. While that article deals mainly with warfare, even without the specter of war, aging nuclear facilities will befall the same tragedies as other aging infrastructure globally.
Even if the infrastructure isn't disintegrating, most of it isn't designed for today's extreme weather events and is often quickly overwhelmed in extreme rain events. Flooding can also affect agriculture in a rather negative manner.
The simple fact is that we have set ourselves up for failure by building civilization in the first place. None of it was sustainable from the start because it is based on technology use, and technology use reduces or removes the necessary negative feedbacks which once kept the numbers of humans within the carrying capacity of the surrounding landbase. Attempting to continue this way of life will never be sustainable as a result, even if overshoot is reduced to the carrying capacity of an area. Without those negative feedbacks keeping population steady, population growth continues and pushes the system back into overshoot. This is precisely why bargaining to maintain civilization results in the ending of our dominance.
Worded another way in an article by George Tsakraklides who uses the economy as an analogy, quote:
"The reason we have not gone extinct yet is that we are still able to extract resources, even from a decimated planet. As this extraction phase comes to an end, we will find ourselves completely cut off and unable to re-integrate into the ecosystem even if we wanted to. We have made ourselves unwanted by this ecosystem, and this makes us far more vulnerable to extinction than we may initially assume."
He goes on with this:"As a result, almost all humans on planet Earth have a vested interest in seeing this planet destroyed: whether to keep their jobs or maintain their lifestyle, they are hostages to a system of natural destruction they can simply never unshackle themselves from. This profit-driven civilization renders us consciously unconscious to its self-destructive destiny: we diligently go through the motions of a mechanical existence where we may have an abundance of purpose, but very little meaning.
But the accounting department has no clue how to run things. It is staffed by a bunch of mafia mobsters. In fact, the human economy is a Ponzi scheme holding the entirety of Earth’s economy hostage, making every single human participant a stakeholder who has everything to lose if it all goes south. These stakeholders then go on to devise the religions, lies and myths they need to keep telling themselves and everybody else, in order to keep the Ponzi scheme going.
As with all Ponzi schemes, exponential growth is always followed by exponential collapse. The human garbage party will soon be over, ending in a spectacular plastic bonfire."
Once again, we're back to acceptance being the only realistic way to deal with the predicaments in front of us because there is no solution. As for those who would like to see permaculture or regenerative agriculture "restore" biodiversity, this isn't likely for a variety of reasons, one in particular being invasives. There are countless invasive species, but one in particular, hammerhead worms, is known for being difficult if not impossible to eradicate as mentioned in this material, quote:
"Management of land planaria in the landscape is difficult to impossible as many species are well established and there are few scalable control recommendations available."
Hammerhead worms are listed in the USDA National Invasive Species Information Center and are far more widely distributed than I would have guessed. Combined with the other reasons listed in this article, one can safely rule out these ideas of "restoring" biodiversity and other forms of sheer hubris.
Despite my attempts at pointing out our lack of agency with regard to so many different things (all related to the predicaments we face), and that this stems mostly from our utter lack of free will (the universe is deterministic in nature), people still want to argue that we do have agency. Unfortunately, these are false beliefs rooted in ignorance and/or denial. The facts won't change just because someone doesn't like them. Tim Watkins tells the story here about what the Just Stop Oil protests, the recent LA fires, the decline of the British economy, current UK energy policy, the Covid lockdowns, and sanctions on Russia (but not Brexit) have in common. Just like those who want to argue about agency, the common factor here is hubris.
Hubris comes in all shapes and sizes and types, of course. Where it comes to our lack of agency, Tom Murphy points to the reality time and time again, as he does in this article, quote:
"If life had not availed itself of mechanisms to assist in the securing of essential nutrients and resources to facilitate its self-replication, then it wouldn’t be life. The mechanisms may be too complex for us to grasp using puny meat-brains—being based on neurological mechanisms selected for different purposes. But the seed or spore provide a window into a stripped-down form of decision-making that more evidently comes down to a mechanical process—rather than some ethereal higher-plane assessment—since the interior is completely inactive and non-participatory.Life makes decisions because decisions make life. Rivers flow because failing to do so would terminate their status as rivers. Every action in the universe, down to the motion of en electron can be cast as a decision, always based on simultaneous assessment of many factors/stimuli, and always obeying the laws of physics. Nothing has any freedom to do otherwise. Just because our brains are incapable of tracking the complexity of the mechanisms that lead to decisions at the level of life does not invalidate the basis. How grandiose to imagine that we have a say in the matter!
For me, this perspective only serves to enhance appreciation for life. It serves humility. It places me deep within the tangle of the material universe in all its diversity. It connects me intimately to every living and non-living entity—which is the way of things whether I’m ready to acknowledge it or not."
Whether one is ready to acknowledge it or not - once again, it is true whether one believes in it or not! I'm well aware of how difficult it is to accept. But whether one accepts it or not is pretty much irrelevant - the universe will continue operating according to nature's laws (which includes us) regardless of whether we like it or not.
Taking all this into consideration, and knowing the biological imperatives indicated by the MPP, as I mentioned above in the first paragraph, one can clearly see certain things that won't happen.
On a more cheerful note, here are some wonderful, colorful pictures of Moncove Lake in autumn!
Been reading your blog. I’ve been dealing with this and clarifying my understanding of overshoot and the “ Devil’s bargain” of global industrial civ, for about 20 years now. Not much to add….you e covered it all beautifully.
ReplyDeleteThank you.