How radical is 'radical change,' exactly?
Are we 'only' looking at a huge shift away from dependence upon fossil fuels, or are we facing something more akin to the consequences of taking a souffle out of the oven before it's properly cooked?
I've just finished reading Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Survive by Jared Diamond. He describes problems that proved terminal for numerous past societies (Easter Island, Maya, Greenland Norse, etc).
Some of them look very familiar: deforestation, overpopulation, pollution, unsustainable resource use. The usual suspects.
The most striking difference is that the societies Diamond investigates collapsed largely in isolation. When the Easter Islanders deforested their habitat so completely that it could no longer sustain them, it is doubtful whether any other human on the planet was even aware of the situation. Nowadays, the stakes are much higher. It's entirely possible that we could render the earth uninhabitable for the majority of the species that currently make it their home.
The thrust of Diamond's book, however, is not pessimistic. He labels himself a "cautious optimist." He also highlights examples of societies that have recognised the signals that they were moving towards collapse, and adjusted their trajectory. Tikopians, for example, live on a tiny island in the Southwest Pacific capable of supporting fewer than 1200 people. Around A.D. 1600, they realised that their desire to keep pigs was incompatible with their desire to grow crops and not have them eaten by pigs. So they slaughtered every pig on the island.
This decision illustrates one of the primary themes of Collapse: societies that adapt are the ones who are prepared to make a fearless inventory of their most cherished values, and jettison the ones that cannot be sustained.
Dmitry Orlov, on the other hand, is convinced that collapse, at least for the USA, is inevitable. In a talk he gave to 550 people at Cowell Theatre in San Francisco, he claims that the mechanism of collapse is well underway, and that "trying to change its path is like trying to change the path of a hurricane." Rather than seeking to prevent collapse, he advises people to prepare for it, "mostly by changing our expectations, our preferences and scaling down our needs."
He also does a nice line in gallows humour, pointing out that when collapse takes hold, "lots of people just completely lose it. Men especially. ... And when they completely lose it, they become very tedious company."
So which is it to be? Retooling ourselves for a sustainable future, or preparing for a much reduced one? I'm inclined to favour a combination of the two. Unlike Diamond, I tend to believe some degree of societal collapse is inevitable, particularly in First World countries.
On the other hand, I'm not exactly taking the wheel and accelerating the hummer towards the cliff. I tend to the belief that collapse is a maladaptive response to the challenges posed by resource limits. If we refuse to take those limits seriously, our introduction to the consequences of overshooting them will be swift and brutal. If we make every effort to understand and work with them, maybe they'll let us off with a warning.
Are we 'only' looking at a huge shift away from dependence upon fossil fuels, or are we facing something more akin to the consequences of taking a souffle out of the oven before it's properly cooked?
I've just finished reading Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Survive by Jared Diamond. He describes problems that proved terminal for numerous past societies (Easter Island, Maya, Greenland Norse, etc).
Some of them look very familiar: deforestation, overpopulation, pollution, unsustainable resource use. The usual suspects.
The most striking difference is that the societies Diamond investigates collapsed largely in isolation. When the Easter Islanders deforested their habitat so completely that it could no longer sustain them, it is doubtful whether any other human on the planet was even aware of the situation. Nowadays, the stakes are much higher. It's entirely possible that we could render the earth uninhabitable for the majority of the species that currently make it their home.
The thrust of Diamond's book, however, is not pessimistic. He labels himself a "cautious optimist." He also highlights examples of societies that have recognised the signals that they were moving towards collapse, and adjusted their trajectory. Tikopians, for example, live on a tiny island in the Southwest Pacific capable of supporting fewer than 1200 people. Around A.D. 1600, they realised that their desire to keep pigs was incompatible with their desire to grow crops and not have them eaten by pigs. So they slaughtered every pig on the island.
This decision illustrates one of the primary themes of Collapse: societies that adapt are the ones who are prepared to make a fearless inventory of their most cherished values, and jettison the ones that cannot be sustained.
Dmitry Orlov, on the other hand, is convinced that collapse, at least for the USA, is inevitable. In a talk he gave to 550 people at Cowell Theatre in San Francisco, he claims that the mechanism of collapse is well underway, and that "trying to change its path is like trying to change the path of a hurricane." Rather than seeking to prevent collapse, he advises people to prepare for it, "mostly by changing our expectations, our preferences and scaling down our needs."
He also does a nice line in gallows humour, pointing out that when collapse takes hold, "lots of people just completely lose it. Men especially. ... And when they completely lose it, they become very tedious company."
So which is it to be? Retooling ourselves for a sustainable future, or preparing for a much reduced one? I'm inclined to favour a combination of the two. Unlike Diamond, I tend to believe some degree of societal collapse is inevitable, particularly in First World countries.
On the other hand, I'm not exactly taking the wheel and accelerating the hummer towards the cliff. I tend to the belief that collapse is a maladaptive response to the challenges posed by resource limits. If we refuse to take those limits seriously, our introduction to the consequences of overshooting them will be swift and brutal. If we make every effort to understand and work with them, maybe they'll let us off with a warning.
