Posted: Tue Nov 28, 2006 1:37 am Post subject: Re: Converging Catastrophes
Jack wrote:
The biosphere will recover somewhat, after which population numbers will increase again - thus creating a new cycle of overshoot followed by yet another dieoff. I suppose the next overshoot will be more modest than our present one.
If it weren't so tragic I'd say that was a great sci-fi premise. If it weren't so depressing it I'd write it. _________________ ree rah rip ram. sunofabitch godamn. hidey didey christ almighty. rah rah crap
Joined: May 24, 2004 Posts: 3429 Location: California, USA
Posted: Tue Nov 28, 2006 1:45 am Post subject: Re: Converging Catastrophes
This topic has generated some of the best thinking & writing I've seen on this site yet, and perhaps it can mark a turning point in the direction of comprehensive approaches to sustainability.
----
The Problematique, as the Club of Rome calls it....
Realistically it's clear that systemic inertias on all levels: population growth, resource consumption, economics, and so on, are so large that it is unlikely they can be turned around by any combination of actions that humans are freely willing to take. In each case there are enormous rewards for continuing to "stay the course" right over the edge of the cliff.
Some of these rewards apply to all humans: the desire for orgasms, for full bellies, for comfortable indoor temperatures, for sleep undisturbed by the biting and gnawing of insects on one's body (yes, gnawing). Some historically apply primarily to the poor who are the majority of our species: the security and comfort of knowing that enough of your offspring will survive to adulthood, to take care of you in your older years. Some apply primarily to the relatively-wealthy by which is meant the middle and upper middle classes: an ongoing supply of new material goods and mobility for the sake of entertainment. Some apply primarily to the ruling class, by which is meant those who hold overt power or sufficient wealth as to translate to power: compound interest, the ability to live off the work of others, the rewards of the growth paradigm.
Note that each of the above cases is merely a linear extrapolation of the behavior of apes. Monkeys enjoy and relish their orgasms, full bellies, and so on; they breed up to the limit of their food supply; they grasp at anything that's literally shiny or new; and they establish social power through dominance hierarchies. The only reason they don't have the equivalent of financial capital and its tendency to require growth for its own survival, is because that is an abstract concept above their level of intelligence.
Note also that that things we, here in this forum, value most and strive hardest to preserve, are our knowledge and wisdom: the arts and sciences, philosophy and religion and athletics; the skilled trades, the technical know-how to chase out ignorance and pain and provide the means for learning as an intrinsic goal; the capacity to defend ourselves when attacked or better yet to deter aggression; and the system of equal justice under law that assures the liberty of each and every.
So then, to use Aldous Huxley's immortal phrase, which will it be, "Ape or Essence"....?
Civilization and hunter-gatherers.
For some years now I've been defining "civilization" as "a type or condition of society characterized by ongoing increase of knowledge and ongoing decrease of violence." This has nothing to do with civilization as city, or as economic system, or as consumption paradigm, and everything to do with the same intrinsics that we value as expressions of essence rather than apehood.
The increase of knowlege and the reduction of violence can, like the core empirical methods of science or the core contemplative methods of religion, be pursued regardless of a society's level of material wealth, so long as basic bodily needs are met and there is sufficient free time for learning. Hunter-gatherers after all worked only four hours per day for subsistence; it is not inconceivable that some future equivalent will use their remaining free time to study their world in depth, compose philosophy, and stretch themselves to expand their capabilities as far as their genes enable.
Realistic courses of action.
What "we" should do, i.e. humans-at-large:
Reduce population by 5.5 billion as quickly as possible, starting with the most humane methods available at any given time.
Reduce consumption levels by 40% or more among those of us in the "developed" world, starting by cutting out luxuries from the top down.
Use the logistical capabilities and vast practical skills of the world's militaries as a global force to reverse the adverse ecological impacts of the previous century (for example through reforestation and construction of climate-clean energy infrastructure).
Realistically the above outcomes are unlikely, but things even less likely have happened when a sufficient critical mass of humans puts forth the effort. 'Tis better to try, even if we fail, than to fail to try at all.
What we should do, i.e. those of us who are writing and reading here, and those we can reach directly:
One, participate fully in civic action to achieve the global goals of population reduction, consumption reduction, impact mitigation, and ecosystem restoration. Everything else is secondary to these goals because without them everything else is not possible.
Two, build sustainable community either where you are presently living or in a new area where you can spend the rest of your life. Sustainable community is the embodiment on the personal scale of those global-scale strategies. By definition it requires four things of its members: a negative reproductive rate, powerdown, direct ecosystem interventions, and civic interventions toward the big-picture goals above.
The dieoff we face is not the first nor will it be the last. There have been plagues and pandemics that reduced continental populations by 60%. There have been space-object impacts that have reduced the entire human race to as little as 10,000 members (search the phrase "genetic bottleneck" for more). There will be more of same before our sun goes nova. Hopefully by that time we will either have recovered sufficiently to have launched ourselves to the stars, older and wiser, or we will have discovered some higher order of existence that replaces or renders moot the need for physical permanence.
Every single one....
...of your ancestors, since the first hominids who looked at their opposable thumbs and went "Hmm!"... and further back all the way to the first cells in the primordial soup... managed to survive their own Darwinian challenges. Otherwise you would not be here.
It took all of 100% of them to succeed in order to produce you. I'd say that's a pretty good track record, and you carry the results in every cell in your body.
Joined: Oct 23, 2005 Posts: 1791 Location: East of Eden
Posted: Tue Nov 28, 2006 2:07 am Post subject: Re: Converging Catastrophes
gg3 wrote:
Go now and do what needs to be done.
Damn, gg3, that was a hell of a post -- and a kick in the ass. Thanks. _________________ "If a path to the better there be, it begins with a full look at the worst." — Thomas Hardy
Posted: Tue Nov 28, 2006 4:06 am Post subject: Re: Converging Catastrophes
I would suggest, if you are looking at converging catastrophes, you have missed a couple of biggies in a focus on mainly ecological threats.
1) Demographic timebomb
Its not just the increased drain on unfunded welfare, health and state pension systems that looms. As the baby boom generation retires the pension funds turn from being a net investors in the markets to withdrawing funds to pay out instead. That makes these markets less liquid and stocks, etc. less valuable. You can't even ignore the grannies since they are expected to live longer and are still allowed to vote. Financial strife and civil strife from now for the next two decades as the young find they are expected to pay ever higher taxes to fund the grey generation.
2) Pandemic Disease
Pandemic flu is just one example of the potential for large scale outbreak of disease - particularly as resistance builds up to much of our armoury of medicines. Its a case of when, not if, a virilant diseases breaks out and travels the world in a few weeks. The response is seen not just the millions of deaths, but in the crumbing of the systems of civilisation as the irresilience of modern just-in-time systems meets the situation where there is 'outside' for people to come and set things right from and New Orleans post Katrina becomes a model. _________________ Arcane Domain
The gigantic catastrophes that threaten us today are not elemental happenings of a physical or biological order, but psychic events. To a quite terrifying degree we are threatened by wars and revolutions which are nothing other than psychic epidemics. At any moment several millions of human beings may be smitten with a new madness, and then we shall have another world war or devastating revolution. Instead of being at the mercy of wild beasts, earthquakes, landslides, and inundations, modern man is battered by the elemental forces of his own psyche - Carl Gustav Jung (German Psychologist)
There is no anti-depressant that will cure a depression that's spiritually based, for the malaise doesn't originate from brain dysfunction, but from an accurate response to the desecration of life - David R. Hawkins (Power Vs. Force)
'till now man has been up against Nature. From now on he will be up against his own nature - Denis Gabor
Have fun
Quote:
The Pluto Alignment - November 2006
We are now approaching the half-way point in the Maya “Age of Revealing” which began in 1999. December 21 1999 began the final 13 year countdown to the zero-year of 2012. The half-way point is 2007, so we can expect some major changes on all levels of our being during and after that time. Pluto, the planet-archetype of radical change, cleansing and deconstruction will conjunct with Galactic Center in November of this year.
Some Effects Will Be:
Greater corrpution and belligerance from authority structures
Great infringement and illegality from on high
Greater infringement of personal privacy
Greater sexual debauchery
Lack of respect for boundaries
Hightened voyeurism and invasion of the private space
Increased energy vampirism from toxic people in our midst
All out criminality from unlikely sources (particularly excessive greed)
Flagrant abuse of good will and help
Increased and perceivable sadism
Emotional depression and rising anxiety and paranoia
Aberrations in Nature (drought, cold, heatwaves, catastrophes, fauna death)
Changes in Hartmann Waves, Schumann Frequency, Ultra Violet Light, Axial Wobble, Light from Sun, etc,.)
Physical ailments (particularly affecting digestion, alimentary system, liver, colon, genitals, ovaries, and reproductive ganglia)
Mental Breakdown due to stress and substance abuses
Freak Accidents
_________________ Let us make him who shall nourish and sustain us. What shall we do to be invoked; to be remembered in the earth.
We have tried with our first creatures but we could not make them venerate us.
So let us try to make obedient respectful beings who shall
Posted: Tue Nov 28, 2006 5:16 am Post subject: Re: Converging Catastrophes
Note the growing list of inputs to this convergence. Every thrid post or so there is another "but you forgot this problem"
This thread summarizes my expectation of "imminent doom" better than any to date. _________________ "Don't ever become a pessimist... a pessimist is correct oftener than an optimist, but an optimist has more fun, and neither can stop the march of events."
Robert A. Heinlein
Posted: Tue Nov 28, 2006 8:51 am Post subject: Re: Converging Catastrophes
You've brought up some very good issues but why no mention of the economy that provides everything we need to live?
Not knowing your situation I'm going to make the assumption that the ocean could be full of healthy fish but without an economy you wouldn't be eating any fish. More specifically, without anything of value to trade, no one's giving you fish.
My 1/10th of an acre at the end of a cul-de-sac is a resource desert, everything is piped, wired, or shipped in. Any prolonged (more than 1 week) disruption of services would have catastrophic consequences for those around me.
And when everyone works in the service industry it's like one big circle jerk. When the music stops we will all learn the golden rule of economics; you must manufacture something to create wealth (read: steal it from the earth). But low and behold we went and outsourced it all to the point that we don't even make one single freakin' textile in this entire country. Talk about being dependent on a strong U$D. _________________ Survive the economic fallout...
PeakEconomy.com
Posted: Tue Nov 28, 2006 9:52 am Post subject: Re: Converging Catastrophes
Great post, Coyote:
Quote:
Enforced paradigm shift
What you are talking about is a complete global nerdocracy--rule by technical people who would regulate energy consumption, food distribution, etc. in such a way as to make most efficient and effective use of the remaining fossil fuel and/or agricultural resources, without the resultant pollution.
The first problem that the nerds will have to solve is the political problem of unequal lifestyle distribution between rich and poor: To what extent are you willing to allow the Rodeo Drive set, or anyone else, to live in their current way in order to keep somebody in Somalia from starving to death? Either way, you are talking about taking from the rich, so you will get some resistance. Ironically, China is the place that you would be most likely be able to excercise some kind of mass population control, but unfortunately, they have now gotten on the bandwagon of mass consumption so the genie is out of the bottle over there and the nerds would be hard pressed to put it back in.
The second problem of course is the culturally entrenched attitudes of energy consumption, for sure in the US, but to a lesser extent in Western Europe. Poor Jimmy Carter, wearing his sweater, will tell you how popular this will be. The whole USA is run at the local level by former real estate developers and used car salesmen who have gotten themselves elected to the county commission. As long as you have this, you will have plenty of cars and houses. This is the true "American Religion" and we have demonstrated our willingness to fight and die for it.
Now it is possible for a nation or nations, in times of extreme trauma, to mobilize to this level. Apparently during world war II 90% of the population was involved in the near dictatorial war effort restrictions, and went along with it. The sacrifices of the Japanese, Europeans, and Russian citizens are also well known during this period. But, a lot of people had to die to get sufficient buy-in from the population to make this happen. We are not only talking about the population at large, but industry in particular. The financial system will not support it in any kind of meaningful way.
So I guess what I am saying is that it is probably possible technically for the nerds to design a global-scale system that would be almost able to sustain some lifestyles at some level, but the political and social engineering of this system will make it practically impossible to do. Silly humans, won't do what's good for them, even at gunpoint.
So, we will see. It's possible we can avoid the crash, but not probable.
Joined: Oct 23, 2005 Posts: 1791 Location: East of Eden
Posted: Tue Nov 28, 2006 12:05 pm Post subject: Re: Converging Catastrophes
EnergyHog wrote:
You've brought up some very good issues but why no mention of the economy that provides everything we need to live?
Well, I did mention the economy in relation to peak oil, the first point -- but you're right, I didn't emphasize it. We've set ourselves up for some pretty bad economic times even without the resource and ecological issues that were listed. But I think those economic crises, as bad as they might be (and possibly devastating to me personally), are still things from which it would be possible to recover in fairly short order, say, decades or so. That's without peak oil, of course. Screwing around with mother nature, on the other hand, and severely depleting our resource base, that's pretty apocalyptic stuff. When we effectively deplete oil and natural gas, that's it -- forever, for all intents and purposes. We won't be able to claw our way back out of that hole. Same with global warming, loss of biodiversity, desertification etc. This stuff is effectively permanent. That's what's so disturbing about it. _________________ "If a path to the better there be, it begins with a full look at the worst." — Thomas Hardy
Posted: Tue Nov 28, 2006 2:54 pm Post subject: Re: Converging Catastrophes
All those disasters can be avoided with a few simple changes
not that it will happen of course.
The simple changes would be
ban all corporations .(allow partnerships with unlimited liability)
ban all advertisements.
change the currency from paper to units energy.(Kwatts and energy that can be stored like oil will be at a premium)
change school from a place that makes you hate learning to the opposite.
allow no more than 1% of GDP military spending .
Banning corps is definetly not communism.
Communism is banning private property. _________________ IMHO great war will happen soon.
Start preparing now.
Joined: Nov 09, 2004 Posts: 1236 Location: Big Rock Candy Mountain
Posted: Tue Nov 28, 2006 3:18 pm Post subject: Re: Converging Catastrophes
The only human societies that have averted overshoot/dieoff have been those that maintained "planetary consciousness". Humans appear (to me) to have evolved to be able to function in concert with nature in only relatively small groups. Overpopulation (and I mean more than a few hundred people in a given area) apparently kicks in a "General Adaptation Syndrome" of Paleolithic Consciousness, leading to destructive, bizarre behavior (i. e. "civilization"). gg3 is right, overpopulation is the root of human insanity.
How else could intelligent people like the Easter Islanders have destroyed their tiny paradise while building a bunch of stupid statues.
A mass extinction is inescapable. Some of us, who have prepared a more sustainable way of existing, may survive. The more I learn about how the biosphere works, though, the more pessimistic I become.
Posted: Tue Nov 28, 2006 3:55 pm Post subject: Re: Converging Catastrophes
gg3 wrote:
Every single one....
...of your ancestors, since the first hominids who looked at their opposable thumbs and went "Hmm!"... and further back all the way to the first cells in the primordial soup... managed to survive their own Darwinian challenges. Otherwise you would not be here.
It took all of 100% of them to succeed in order to produce you. I'd say that's a pretty good track record, and you carry the results in every cell in your body.
Go now and do what needs to be done.
Hmmm, well I think you may overestimate our adaptability. I'm not worried about the 'primodial soup', though I can certainly imagine a radical pruning of the current tree of life, eliminating many of the more recent and complex organisms, including many mammals. And us.
Posted: Tue Nov 28, 2006 4:10 pm Post subject: Re: Converging Catastrophes
coyote wrote:
EnergyHog wrote:
You've brought up some very good issues but why no mention of the economy that provides everything we need to live?
Well, I did mention the economy in relation to peak oil, the first point -- but you're right, I didn't emphasize it. We've set ourselves up for some pretty bad economic times even without the resource and ecological issues that were listed. But I think those economic crises, as bad as they might be (and possibly devastating to me personally), are still things from which it would be possible to recover in fairly short order, say, decades or so. That's without peak oil, of course. Screwing around with mother nature, on the other hand, and severely depleting our resource base, that's pretty apocalyptic stuff. When we effectively deplete oil and natural gas, that's it -- forever, for all intents and purposes. We won't be able to claw our way back out of that hole. Same with global warming, loss of biodiversity, desertification etc. This stuff is effectively permanent. That's what's so disturbing about it.
I agree that the issues you brought up are much more important than economics. However I find economics (really it's access to resources) to be the more emminent threat. If I can't survive the economic collapse that is on the horizon there isn't much point in worrying about the longer term threats. The other reason I put economic collapse as a higher priority is that it's something I feel I can ride out if I'm prepared. Global warming and some of the other complex topics mentioned just don't look like something that I can prepare for with any degree of certainty, in my opinion.
To make a long story longer, I stopped worrying about peak oil once I realized that the economy is on the verge of collapse and post collapse it wouldn't matter if oil was $1/bbl, I wouldn't be able to get my hands on it and even if I could, it wouldn't do me much good.
I must admit my approach is somewhat selfish, I notice that many others are worried about humanity surviving. I'm all for that, as long as humanity includes me.
I would never have learned about any of this if it wasn't for LATOC, thanks again Matt! _________________ Survive the economic fallout...
PeakEconomy.com
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ree rah rip ram. sunofabitch godamn. hidey didey christ almighty. rah rah crap 
