Insight and inspiration in turbulent times.
For decades now, those concerned with the future of the industrial world have warned that a point would come, sooner or later, when the consequences of all that short-term thinking would begin coming home to roost. For the United States, that point might be arriving now.
-The Wayfinders: Why Ancient Wisdom Matters in the Modern World
-Who Will Build the Ark?
-Why Ecological Revolution?
-‘Population Justice’ — The Wrong Way to Go
In a new book, Bottleneck: Humanity’s Impending Impasse, William Catton, Jr. says human society is now on an unstoppable trajectory for a significant die-off. Catton, author of the well-known classic of human ecology, Overshoot, expects that by 2100 the world population will be smaller, perhaps much smaller, than it is today. We are in what he calls “the bottleneck century.”
As others have pointed out, many of Haiti’s problems have been related to its population density, associated environmental degradation and its need for cheap energy. Now, with the worst earthquake shaking the Caribbean in 200 years, we must sadly add another chapter to the Haitian book chronicling the linkage between its human and ecological disasters.
The American West at Risk’s 13 chapters examine some of the major human-caused environmental problems now threatening the 11 contiguous Western states…Citing trustworthy, peer-reviewed studies in support of its arguments, and written by three trained scientists, this book has every claim for credibility—and is an enlightening and gripping read for scientists and laypeople alike.
The veneration of the automobile is a custom that is gradually, steadily becoming more commonplace in urban India. The global auto industry’s major manufacturers are betting on it, India’s central government is betting on it, and tens of thousands of new customers in India are delivering that bet.
Much of the way that we conduct ourselves is based on habit. For example, we get into the habit of crossing our arms with our right hand (or left hand) on top. It is not that putting the right hand or left hand on top is better or worse. We have just developed a habit of crossing our arms in a particular way.
“as mankind proceeded to get bigger and bigger we silently crossed a threshold”
…I feel like I shouldn’t be here, that none of us should be. . .that there should be 200,000 Cuyetano Huanca’s and Shorbana Khatun’s in Copenhagen, not 25,000 NGO reps and media reps. It’s a bit of a disgrace, and a reminder of our hubris, to think we represent the interests of the people most hurt by overconsumption (btw – this should not be a “climate conference” but a “capitalism/ overconsumption conference-;we should be focusing on the cause, not the effect)…
It’s been a good couple of weeks for whistleblowers, with the IEA and an important climate change center both hit by claims that data has been fudged. Hard questions might similarly be directed at a good many of the “facts” that shape most of today’s policy decisions — including those that are defining the industrial world’s nonresponse to peak oil.
First I should confess to a strong bias toward the content of this book. As readers of my blog, Question Everything, will realize, I have been moving inexorably toward the same conclusion as the author, so you will perhaps forgive me if you think I may be suffering from a lack of sufficient critical thinking. Put bluntly, I think this is a book every thinking human being should read, and then consider for themselves.
John Michael Greer has officially established himself as an institution within the peak oil community. Truly one of the finest minds working on the predicament of modern-day industrial civilization, he is so well-read in so many fields that he regularly gains access to insights that utterly elude his contemporaries. For this he is treasured by a growing number of loyal readers—and, I suspect, hated by equally many fellow bloggers who wish that they could be half as good.
