An environmental collapse, OTOH, could mean curtains for most of the highly evolved (i.e. specialized) species on earth. There may be time to save us from such a collapse, but I see little effort or willingness on the part of tptb or even posters on this site in that direction. Instead, we hoard gold, silver and other resources and try to get "off grid" to the extent possible. That's not to say these things are bad, just short sighted....
I share your concern about this topic Doug, so I have to ask what can I do about it on a personal level?
Give me ten things that I can do for the biosphere that don't involve politics or trying to force my personal agenda on another person.
Before you reply with "plant a tree", please note that I have propagated and planted over 50 trees a year for the last 22 years (in my early twenties I had some stupid notion that I could plant a 100,000 trees in my lifetime....FAIL).
And regarding "trying to get off-grid" as being short-sighted, I don't follow your logic. Can you elaborate?
Best....Jeff
I'm going to cross post this in the dungeon and in the public forums because I think the ideas discussed in the linked article are universal. One of the conversants in this article, Paul Kingsnorth, claims to have been in the environmental movement for 20 years, half his life, and to have "given up" on the movement because the fight is effectively lost. I have been on the periphery of that movement for 40 years and have allowed the same dark thoughts to cross my mind.
The author of the article, Wen Stephenson, apparently shares Kingsnorth's views of the environment, but thinks there is still a chance for the movement to change the world's course. The exchange is thought provoking.
The primary focus of this site is energy and economy. The third E, environment, has largely been banished to the CT dungeon with only passing references to the environment outside of the dungeon. Tar sands are devastating vast stretches of landscape (yawn), mountain top removal is destroying entire ecosystems and ways of life (move along, move along), ecosystem destruction is extirpating so many species that we are in the 5th or 6th great extinction event in earth's history (I really don't care about all those creapy crawlies), the world's great waterways are becoming little more than avenues of transportation and introduction of invasive species (I don't swim, fish or boat, what do I care) and arable farmland is disappearing and being degraded everywhere (I'll just farm my backyard if the stores run out of food).
I know most of us are fixated on the financial crisis, but my pov is that if the economy collapses in the worst possible way, it will probably be good for the environment because we won't be able to screw it up on such a grand scale. The remaining humans will muddle along somehow. An environmental collapse, OTOH, could mean curtains for most of the highly evolved (i.e. specialized) species on earth. There may be time to save us from such a collapse, but I see little effort or willingness on the part of tptb or even posters on this site in that direction. Instead, we hoard gold, silver and other resources and try to get "off grid" to the extent possible. That's not to say these things are bad, just short sighted. My point is we spend way too much time and energy on economy and energy, and virtually none on environment. If this post winds up in the dungeon, so be it.
http://grist.org/climate-energy/i-withdraw-a-talk-with-climate-defeatist-paul-kingsnorth/
Not everyone is quite ready to hear, or accept, what Paul Kingsnorth has to say.
An English writer and erstwhile green activist, he spent two decades (he’ll turn 40 this year) in the environmental movement, and he’s done with all that. And not only environmentalism — he’s done with “hope.” He’s moved beyond it. He’s not out to “save the planet.” He’s had it with the dream of “sustainability.” He’s looked into the abyss of planetary collapse, and he’s more or less fine with it: Collapse? Sure. Bring it on.<!--break-->
These are precarious and unprecedented times … Little that we have taken for granted is likely to come through this century intact.
We don’t believe that anyone — not politicians, not economists, not environmentalists, not writers — is really facing up to the scale of this … Somehow, technology or political agreements or ethical shopping or mass protest are meant to save our civilization from self-destruction.
Well, we don’t buy it. This project starts with our sense that civilization as we have known it is coming to an end; brought down by a rapidly changing climate, a cancerous economic system and the ongoing mass destruction of the non-human world. But it is driven by our belief that this age of collapse — which is already beginning — could also offer a new start, if we are careful in our choices.
The end of the world as we know it is not the end of the world full stop.<!--break-->
Kingsnorth tossed a grenade in the January/February issue of Orion Magazine with his controversial essay “Confessions of a Recovering Environmentalist.” There, Kingsnorth gets to the heart of his case. “We are environmentalists now,” he writes, “in order to promote something called ‘sustainability.’ What does this curious, plastic word mean? … It means sustaining human civilization at the comfort level that the world’s rich people — us — feel is their right, without destroying the ‘natural capital’ or the ‘resource base’ that is needed to do so.”
Ouch. But he isn’t finished.
If “sustainability” is about anything, it is about carbon. Carbon and climate change. To listen to most environmentalists today, you would think that these were the only things in the world worth talking about. … Carbon emissions threaten a potentially massive downgrading of our prospects for material advancement as a species. … If we cannot sort this out quickly, we are going to end up darning our socks again and growing our own carrots and other such unthinkable things.<!--break-->
I do think that climate change campaigners like yourself should be more upfront about what you’re trying to ‘save.’ It’s not the world. It’s not humanity either, which I’d bet will survive whatever comes in some form or another, though perhaps with drastically reduced numbers and no broadband connection. No, what you’re trying to save, it seems to me, is the world you have grown used to.
“Sustainability” is, as far as I can see, a project designed to keep this culture — this lifestyle — afloat. The modern human economy is an engine of mass destruction. Of course, I am conflicted about this. I live at the heart of this machine; like you, I am a beneficiary of it. If it falls apart, I will probably suffer, and I don’t want to<!--break-->.
I think this debate is where we really need to focus more attention if we hope that "localization" is really going to save us.
Doug
PS, I'm posting it this way because I don't know how to post it without those break thingies.