New goal for humans--self limitation

Newfie

[quote="Ibon"]

Ayame

dohboi · Light Sweet Crude Joined: Dec 05, 2005 Posts: 1476

Ibon wrote:

"Our current global human civilization is actually very resilient in comparison with many built in redundancies in terms of energy options, food options, consumption options, migration options. etc. When past civilizations collapsed they were not able to adjust their culture or technologies on the energy descent because of a lack of options once their primary resource based collapsed. When the Mayans couldn’t grow corn any longer due to soil depletion from slash and burn agriculture they were not able to import potatoes from Peru. This quick collapse of their civilization as a result did not enable any cultural transformation."

Nicely put, but while interconnectivity may make any single group on the planet more resilient, the tightly interlocked global trade system we have now makes our whole earth-island increasingly vulnerable to total collapse. We can't as a planet (unless you're a technofantasist) get more potatoes or oil or oxygen from the Martians. There aren't any other livable worlds around to trade with or rob.

And of course we have been busy undermining the resilience and capacity of our only planet's natural systems. Nearly all major fish stocks are now depleted and the seas are acidifying rapidly, forests are in retreat nearly everywhere, arable land is being degraded rapidly in many areas, desertification is running rampant in China and other areas, GW is and will continue to cause increasingly severe weather events and eventually inundate huge areas...........

Given all this, I wouldn't call our "current global human civilization" "very resilient" exactly, however true that may be of individual areas for the short term. We can't all migrate to each other's lands. We already use 40% of the photosynthetically based energy on the earth. Our options for high-quality energy sources are famously diminishing, local food scarcity and enormous global price rises are already a reality....

If we scaled the high consumption societies and classes way, way back to something near subsistence and severely limited reproduction everywhere..., we would probably have a die off in our near future, but we may mitigate the negative impact on future life on the planet.

But nobody really gives a rat's tush about the future of life on the planet and they are certainly not willing to undergo any such draconian (to them, though they are actually more than reasonable considering the current realities) limitations for them.

And the greatest likelihood is that if we embarked on any such program, we would do so in a totally half-assed manner, just enough to relieve obvious and immediate pressure and this would allow us to continue our depredations further and more fully f*ck the future possibilities.

So I guess I am about 90% uber doomer, but I still feel the need to think through what an adequate, responsible pattern of behavior and attitude might look like.

Many of the trade offs that have allowed us to be more resilient in the short term are increasing our fragility long term.

I have no idea what our carrying capacity is, but it seems pretty clear that we are either about at or (more likely) way past it.

Redefining progress has a foot print calculator that suggests that we could be at carrying capacity now if everyone on earth learned to live at or below a certain limit. This basically means every one

living a vegan or near vegan diet
not traveling far, especially not by plane
pretty much giving up car use
living in much smaller houses with many more people in each
almost exclusively local sourcing of food and most other materials
limited use of electricity and that from renewables
limited total possessions per person
.
.
.

I've actually gotten pretty close to their sustainable lifestyle, but I consider it optimistic, but still a good guide line.

I think we need to start applying to lots of things what we have long accepted (well, most) for hunting--the idea of limits.

What if, just as a hunter stops when he meets his limit of deer or pheasant...shoppers had limits set (beyond those imposed by economics). Over shopping has arguably destroyed much more wildlife habitat than over-hunting has. (And no, I am not a hunter.)

How about legal limits to how much space per person in a home? How large a car or truck you can drive? How far? How far and how many times you can drive?

These strike most people as abhorrent infringements of our God-given rights, communism, fascism, horror of horrors!!!!!

But really they are no different than limits we set on hunters which most accept as prudent and wise.

This is the kind of rethinking of our values and ethics I would like to discuss, amicably. Perhaps there are other ways we can achieve the same results. But most economic schemes seem like trying to slightly alter rules of a game that must accept central responsibility for the catastrophic situation we are now in.

As an addendum to my comment on attitudes to homosexuality in my previous post, it seems to me, if we are going to outlaw or limit any kind of marriage, it should be heterosexual not homosexual marriages, those responsible for making almost all the kids. (I am not homosexual, by the way, not that there's anything wrong with that...)

(Sorry about another long rant.)

Ibon

Ibon

dohboi · Light Sweet Crude Joined: Dec 05, 2005 Posts: 1476

I agree, with a slight change of the mood of your auxiliary verb. We might learn from future clamaties, or we might not. There is no guarantee that we will learn anything.

There are many examples of humans failing to learn from even drastic, obvious events. Just read a few pages of Diamond's "Collapse" (I'm sure you have). The Greenland Vikings had clear examples of sustainable living in that environment in the Eskimos, but cultural prejudice prevented them from adapting. This kind of short-sightedness I would take to be more the norm than the exception.

Basically, people need to have mental structures already familiar in their minds before calamity strikes in order to make the accurate sense of it. Otherwise they are almost sure to fall back on the same thought patterns that got them into the mess.

Even with alternate, more accurate explanations on hand, there is no guarantee those will be the ones accepted. I would say that getting it anywhere close to right represents the vast minority of cases. Of course, by cleverness, ruthnessless and propogation, we have managed to thrive relative to other large mammals. But not because we were right about the real big picture.

Basically it is because of the unlikihood that people will derive the right lessons even (or perhaps especially) in the face of massive and catastrophic eveidence that I think it is important to generate discussions like this before and as tshtf.

EnergyUnlimited · Fusion Joined: May 15, 2006 Posts: 3396

The prerequisite to any changes is for experimental evidence to show that present route is not sustainable even in short term.

This implies that total collapse of current system is a prerequisite of change and it must occur for any meaningful change to take place.

IMO it is unlikely to the extreme that any imaginable amount of progressive action can change our attitudes sufficiently and timely enough to prevent collapse of existing setup.
System inertia will prevent that.

However I consider it possible in principle (but not certain by any means) that collapse of current behemoth system will promote sustainable solutions frameworks for reasonably advanced civilizations of the future.

Unfortunately it is very likely that we will descend to increasingly primitive setups, always battered by Nature as need arise and that all theoretical knowledge how to change this fate together with most of current technological knowledge will be lost for good.