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Is the Deadly Crash of Our Civilization Inevitable?
Terrence McNally, AlterNet
An interview with author Thomas Homer-Dixon about the social, political, economic and technological crises we face and how long we can sustain the lifestyle that brought them about.
Humankind is doing more things, faster, across a greater space than ever before, producing changes of a size and speed never seen before.
Thomas Homer-Dixon compares our current situation to driving too fast along a country road in a dense fog. Some ignore the fog and keep their foot pressed on the accelerator, but most of us feel like fairly helpless passengers on this wild ride.
…Thomas Homer-Dixon is director of the Trudeau Centre for the Study of Peace and Conflict at the University of Toronto. He is the author of “The Ingenuity Gap” and his newest book “The Upside of Down: Catastrophe, Creativity, and the Renewal of Civilization.”
Thomas Homer-Dixon: … It’s unlikely that the future is going to be a linear extrapolation of the present, but I’ve pretty well arrived at the conclusion that the diversity and power of the stresses that we’re encountering are going to cause some major volatility. I expect social, political, economic and technological crises and breakdowns. It’s hard to say what they’re going to look like, but the probability of some major problems developing is rising. …
Q: What are the converging stresses you see?
Thomas Homer-Dixon: Demographic, energy, environmental change, especially scarcity of water, shortages of cropland and forest in poor countries, climate, and then finally widening gaps between rich and poor people around the world.
You touched on something a moment ago that’s very important. The real problem is that they’re all happening together. We’ve learned in recent decades that revolution or societal collapse tends to happen when societies are stressed from multiple directions simultaneously.
Q: Peak oil is either already here or perhaps it’s a decade away….
Thomas Homer-Dixon: Once you’ve passed peak production in a field or a region, the decline can be quite rapid. The major oil field in Oman and a lot of the fields in Texas are declining at 12 percent a year. The North Sea field that the U.K. depends upon is declining 8 percent a year. That’s a very rapid shift from increasing production to decreasing production — a shift into a world of scarcity. When we pass the peak in global oil production, energy prices will rise dramatically and very quickly.
…Q: What do you feel will save us from ourselves? What is The Upside of Down?
Thomas Homer-Dixon: …. At the end of my book I spend a fair amount of time talking about the importance of value change. We need to move away from what I call strictly utilitarian values which focus on simple likes and dislikes that emphasize consumption of material goods, towards moral values, and even what I would call existential values. These relate to what we consider to be the good life, what brings meaning into our lives, what kind of world do we really want for our children and our children’s children. These are fundamentally values conversations.
My difference with Diamond is that I don’t think we’re going to really begin those conversations in a proper way until we face some crises or breakdowns. In other words, my impression of his argument is that collapse is something we have to avoid, in all cases and in all forms. On the other hand, I believe there is a spectrum of forms of collapse. At one end is the ideal, optimistic future where we solve all our problems and we live happily every after. At the other end is catastrophic collapse. We have tended not to fill in all the spaces in between, but that’s actually where things might be very interesting. There may be some forms of disruption and crisis that will actually stimulate us to be really creative. Most importantly, they may allow us to get the deep vested interests that are blocking change out of the way.
(13 Feb 2007)
Long interview with one of the foremost thinkers about collapse. -BA
Chat with Dmitry Orlov (Audio)
KMO, C-Realm Podcast
Episode 20: Closing the Disinfo Gap
In this 20th episode I speak with Gary Baddeley of the Disinformation Company about moving memes from the lunatic fringe into the mainstream. Then I chat with Dmitry Orlov about the end of the world as we know it, and I feel fine.
(14 Feb 2007)
Dmitry Orlov is the author of the popular piece Closing the ‘Collapse Gap’: the USSR was better prepared for peak oil than the US. The Orlov segment begins about 25 minutes into the program. -BA
An Outbreak of Post Petroleum Stress Disorder on the Archers.
Rob Hopkins, Transition Culture
This post might be a bit lost on our overseas readers, but it appears that a case of Post-Petroleum Stress Disorder (or something rather like it…) has broken out in Ambridge. Ambridge is the fictitious village which is the home of BBC Radio 4’s long-running soap opera The Archers, an unfortunate addiction passed on to me by my parents many years ago.
While the storylines are usually focused on fairly mundane tales of everyday rural lives, (escaping sheep, droopy wheat and bell ringing practice) sometimes it rises above that to embrace topical issues of the day. It did after all originate during World War 2 as a vehicle for getting ideas and information to the farming community. On last night’s programme, however, one of it’s main characters, Nigel Pargeter (played by Graham Seed, below), ‘got’ climate change, and underwent his dark night of the soul, in what was quite a powerful piece of radio.
(14 Feb 2007)
THE Progressive Crises: Global Warming and Peak Oil
A Siegel, Daily Kos
Every Progressive should recognize and incorporate, deep in their soul, the plain fact: Peak and Global Warming are the most serious threats to Progressive ideals, concepts, policies, and aspirations through the 21st century … AND today.
These are not just let’s wait until tomorrow issues, that should be put in the back of the line to deal with after other issues, we must address them with urgency today if we hope for a progressive world tomorrow. Energize America bumpersticker
Without better energy policies starting now, the future could be bleak economically for decades to come with the impending strike of Peak Oil. Amid recessions and depressions, what happens to mental health programs? What happens to music in the classrooms? Training programs for economically disadvantaged among us? Will there be funding for these and other progressive causes? I doubt it. Don’t you?
(13 Feb 2007)
A Siegel writes about energy and peak oil in his diary at the liberal Democratic site, Daily Kos. He is an ally of EB contributor Jerome a Paris.
Also posted at Political Cortex.
Hybrids, Biofuels and Other False Idols
What’s Being Left Out of Solutions to Fossil Fuel?
Don Fitz, CounterPunch
Everyone from the Republicans to Democrats to major environmental groups are singing hosannas to biofuels and hybrid cars as the salvation from peak oil and global warming. Will trusting corporations to manufacture environmentally friendly cars make a dent in the world’s ecological crises? Or could the “solutions” actually be making the problem worse?
The planned obsolescence and massive production of consumer objects in the overdeveloped countries is responsible for catastrophic climate change and species extinction. The question which we obviously need to address is how to improve the quality of life while decreasing the quantity of useless junk and not throwing anyone out of work. But unflinching loyalty to a growth economy prevents corporate environmentalists from searching for serious transportation options.
Cars are a huge problem, both for global warming and the exhaustion of oil reserves.
…There is a sharp divide between a “deep green” look at the social nature of ecological problems and the “shallow green” approach of corporate environmentalism. Deep greens emphasize that America can improve its health and quality of life while manufacturing fewer objects and shortening the work week. Shallow greens are loathe to say anything about the need to produce less and flee from addressing moral and political dilemmas of a growth economy.
Don Fitz is editor of Synthesis/Regeneration: A Magazine of Green Social Thought, which is sent to members of The Greens/Green Party USA. He can be reached at [email protected]
(14 Feb 2007)
