Problems, Predicaments, and Technology

  Sleeping Bear Dunes, Michigan

People enjoying the shoreline at Sleeping Bear Dunes , Michigan

Trail at Beartree Recreation Area in Virginia

  Forest clear cut along Chattooga Ridge Rd. in South Carolina

  Playhouse (for the landowners' grandchildren) in Jonesboro, Illinois Four of my articles over the past couple of years are part of a four-part series titled, " So, What Should We Do? " The first three articles were written, one after the other, back in 2021 after I discovered our lack of free will which condemns us to make choices based upon our biological (see the Maximum Power Principle ) and cultural conditioning (see this article ). This led me to realize that we truly lack agency to be able to control hyperobjects such as nature, climate change, ecological overshoot , the biosphere, etc. Not only is the predicament of overshoot too difficult for most people to grasp, many people unfortunately place it in the category of problems (with answers or solutions) rather than predicaments (with outcomes). Attempting to reduce issues seen as problems tends to turn those issues into bigger problems and/or predicaments. Often this is due to those working on these issues

Gazebo in Jonesboro, Illinois

  Pictures from Seneca State Forest, West Virginia

  Farm near Douthat State Park, Virginia

  Eagle Rock Train Station, Eagle Rock, Virginia

  Buchanan, Virginia

  Smith Mountain Lake, Virginia

  Dave Gardner is going to run for President of the USA in 2024!   I've never been much into politics simply due to the fact that there are no political (or any other types) solutions to the predicaments we face. This is extremely difficult for most people to fathom, as denial of reality and optimism bias seem to rule the day with so many people who think technology or some other form of idolatry will save us. I also realize that reducing overshoot in the US might not have much effect around the rest of the world. As I've seen some people put it, so-called "solutions" are 4 or 5 decades too late. Still, I do see benefit in attempting to reduce the harm by reducing overshoot. Whether or not such attempts are successful are not as important as simply making the effort, in my mind. Of course, I've been made fun of for quite some time for this very stance, and yet it doesn't really bother me anymore. More often than not, the reasons folks laugh are because they

Some selected images from Pike Lake State Park

Louisville, Kentucky skyline as seen from the Big Four Bridge at Waterfront Park

  Bell Smith Springs Recreational Area

  Trail at Bell Smith Springs in Southern Illinois

  Lake Murphysboro State Park, Illinois

Once upon a time in a faraway land lived a man who published the darkest truths about the happy clappy narratives that so many people appear to want to hear. OK, that is just sarcasm, but who can blame them honestly? Actually, I used to enjoy hearing stories about how mankind is providing all kinds of solutions to the problems which befuddle us. Of course, this was before I realized that technology is an evolutionary cul-de-sac - a big, fat dead-end .  Since then, I have embarked on a journey of sorts, to discover why so many people drink the Kool-Aid  provided by industry and those who promote it. Partly a phenomenon of denial of reality and optimism bias , most people simply cannot handle the truth. That truth is contained in a quote from William Catton Jr.'s book Overshoot : " Homo sapiens has exploited too much. Human "success" entailed enclosure of an unprecedentedly large fraction of the total environment within the expanding boundaries of proliferating man-t

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 p

One of the most incongruent messages I constantly hear about climate change is talk of "solutions" and how "we can do it" which doesn't really agree with the science much at all (see  Agency - Do We Have Free Will?  and The Grand Illusion  for details) . I've been hearing these same messages for 40 years now, and I keep asking myself that if we can do it, why haven't we?   In fact, just the other day, I saw a claim that "if we don't change direction within three years that climate change will become irreversible." I almost laughed, since climate change is ALREADY irreversible on human timescales and has been for quite some time as pointed out in my article, Denial of Reality, quote:  " Most people think that climate change can be "fixed" or reversed, but current science shows that climate change is  irreversible  on human timescales. Another article shows that this is due to  ocean heat uptake  (OHU). Another  recent study