Overshoot

Review: The Witch of Hebron by James Kunstler

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The Witch of Hebron picks up a couple of months after World Made by Hand ended. Returning to the small upstate New York town of Union Grove, the new book further defines the post-apocalyptic setting, adds depth to characters who played only minor parts in the first story, ties up loose ends from the previous book and introduces some all new dilemmas. And it does all of this against the backdrop of a full-moon Halloween, lending a delicious sense of foreboding to the proceedings.

A world in collapse?

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I wake up every morning in a state of profound grief. We humans have been given a privileged place in a world that is beautiful beyond description, and we are destroying it and destroying each other. I cope with that by building temporary psychological damns and dikes to hold back that grief. … If I weren’t politically active, I would lose my mind. The only way I know how to cope is to use some of my energy in collective efforts to try to build something positive.
(Interview with journalism professor at U of Texas)

When truth is unbelievable

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As a college junior I frequented a website (www.dieoff.org) where prognosticators observed that with accelerating rates of environmental destruction, overpopulation and fossil fuel depletion, modern civilization was on the verge of collapse. I kept my new-found realization that life as we knew it was coming an end to myself, for fear of being labeled a “Cassandra.” Only that’s exactly what I would soon become.

The dilemma of poverty in the South: equity or transformation

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The Transition Movement in the ‘West’ (and therefore North) has for the most part been unable to conceptualise a response to the human development and social justice needs of the South. Much of this lack has to do with the very formidable inertness which western societies inherited from the transformations wrought by the Industrial Revolution, and the apparently incontrovertible ideas of ‘progress’ and ‘growth.’

Memo to Kurzweil: The human-machine hybrid already happened and the results are pretty scary

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In Ray Kurzweil’s future technological progress will proceed at a rate that represents the end of the human era and the beginning of one shared by humans and machines joined together and producing unimaginably rapid technological change. He and others refer to this point of transition as the technological singularity. This change, he believes, will enable humanity to overcome all of its most pressing problems: disease, hunger, climate change, resource scarcity, and, of course, death.

Is humanity inherently unsustainable?

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What makes a mild-mannered biology professor call for a planned collapse of the economy? Canadian scientist Bill Rees would know. He was an inventor of the ecological footprint concept, and has been measuring our impact on the planet for decades. Now he’s worried about survival. Ours and all living systems.

The End is nigh – Deepwater Horizon and the technology, economics, and environmental Impacts of Resource Depletion

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Following the failure of the latest efforts to plug the gushing leak from BP’s Deepwater Horizon oil well in the Gulf of Mexico, and amid warnings that oil could continue to flow for another two months or more, perhaps it’s a good time to step back a moment mentally and look at the bigger picture—the context of our human history of resource extraction—to see how current events reveal deeper trends that will have even greater and longer-lasting significance.

Eight principles of uncivilisation

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We live in a time of social, economic and ecological unravelling. All around us are signs that our whole way of living is already passing into history. We will face this reality honestly and learn how to live with it. …. This age of collapse – which is already beginning – could also offer a new start, if we are careful in our choices.
[Manifesto of a new group of writers, artists and thinkers in the UK]

After money

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The unraveling of industrial society, like the declines and falls of other civilizations in the past, involves sweeping changes to the most basic assumptions of economics, and these have practical implications here and now. One of these unfolds from the role of money in contemporary economies — a role that will face dramatic changes in the years ahead of us.