Insight and inspiration in turbulent times.
Joseph Tainter’s model of decline is based on the idea that civilizations attempt to counter the effect of declining resources by creating more complex structures. That strategy fails to bring the desired results because of the diminishing returns of complexity. The same factors may be causing a decline in the worldwide effectiveness of scientific research, plagued by bureaucracy, strangled by excess of rules and controls, and weighed down by lack of resources.
As most of the country slowly roasts in one of the worst heat waves so far, I thought it was worth reminding people that one can stay safe in the heat, even without air conditioning. This is important now for the millions of people who don’t own air conditioners, who don’t want the environmental impact of an air conditioner, or who find themselves for various reasons, without power in the hot weather. As we all know, this is peak season for brown and blackouts.
For centuries, the arbitrary use of power by the state against dissidents has been a key threat to freedom. More recently, the concentrated wealth of corporations has emerged as a major impediment to democracy. When those two centers of power decide to come after people, not only do the individuals suffer, but freedom and democracy take a beating. In his debut book, Green Is the New Red: An Insider’s Account of a Social Movement under Siege, independent journalist Will Potter details one such assault on freedom and democracy, the targeting of environmental and animal-rights activists.
Floods, drought, natural fires, hurricanes, violent storms, massive species extinction, infrastructure collapse, terrorist attacks, starvation, economic disaster, climate change … What in the world is going on?
“We’ve lost sight of the fact that the non-living systems we’ve created and the natural ones we didn’t create share the same planet….and on Earth, Life rules, we don’t,” says Ellen LaConte, author of the new book, Life Rules
In recent discussions in the peak oil blogosphere, the term “resilience” has taken over much of the space once occupied by “sustainability.” Both these words have implications that conflict sharply with the conventional wisdom of our time, but resilience in particular points toward a strategy that, though unwelcome, offers one of the few effective responses to the crisis of our time.
At last count there were at least a dozen mega dangers looming on the horizon all of which have the potential to change the nature of global civilization in profound ways. Yet the body politic seems to take little or no notice and concerns itself largely with issues that will soon be swept away by change. These dangers range from the depletion of our fossil fuel and mineral resources, to shrinking food and water supplies, to rising oceans, to political upheavals.
The pervasive (and especially North American) notion that the arts need to be assigned a monetary value in order to be legitimized is quite simply misplaced. Arts and culture provide intangible value to society; they transcend monetary values just as they transcend history. In a future clouded with economic and environmental uncertainty, subsistence endeavors such as the arts should feature more prominently in society as we move towards a steady state.
A midweekly roundup of peak oil news, including:
-Developments this week
-Japan’s nuclear industry
On both sides of the Atlantic, these issues seem to have considerable potential to worsen to the point that they affect the real economy. If so, the oil price spike of 2010/2011 will be over, and resource issues will continue their retreat to the back of the business section of the newspaper.
Today, for those seeking out an alternative vision of urban success, with new and innovative ideas about what the city of tomorrow should be, it’s Detroit, not New York, that offers the ultimate arena in which to prove yourself.
Okay, so we all know it’s going to hell in a handbasket. We just don’t know when. And so the question becomes what we do in the meantime – how do we live now, clinging as we all are to the fraying edges of a ‘civilisation’ that is so cut off from anything real that, if it were an individual, it would be diagnosed as clinically insane? To me, in some ways, it’s the only question that matters: the urgent one, the one that requires us to find an answer now, while we’re still living, while we still can. Some people choose to look for the answers in philosophy books or meditation classes; David (my husband) and I look for it in the land, and our relationship to the land. More specifically, we look for it – and find it – in crofting, a very special way of living on the land that is unique to Scotland.
Checkout what went on at our latest web chat with Bill McKibben, David Hughes and Kate Sheppard.
