If we keep guzzling dinosaur juice, we'll go the way of the dinosaurs. Photo: Lynn Crounse.
At this late juncture in the era of industry, it seems safe to assume we face one of two futures.
If we continue to burn fossil fuels, we face imminent environmental collapse. If we cease burning fossil fuels, the industrial economy will collapse.
Industrial society expresses these futures as a choice between your money or your life.
It tells you that without money life isn’t worth living. As should be clear by now, industrial society — or at least our industrial “leaders” — have not chosen door number one: environmental collapse; and not door number two: economic collapse. But both. At the same time!
Compassionately selfish
If you believe your life depends upon water coming out of the taps and food showing up at the grocery store, you’ll defend to the death the system that keeps water coming out the taps and food showing up at the grocery story. But news flash: If you think your life depends on that system, you’re a very unusual person, especially historically. And you support an unusual culture marked by overwhelming collateral damage to simultaneously existing non-industrial cultures and non-human species.
And you’re sorely mistaken, besides.
The problem is environmental overshoot
A toxic brew
The root cause of the problem is complex, but it can be reduced to a few primary factors: agriculture and industrialization, the epitome of every civilization in the last thousand years, and their contribution to human population growth.
The genus Homo persisted on the planet some 2 million years, and our own species had been around for at least 250,000 years, without exceeding carrying capacity. We actually lived without posing a threat to the persistence of other species. During those years — two million of them, in fact — humans had abundant spare time for socializing and art, and spent only a few hours each week hunting, gathering, and otherwise preparing to feed themselves (i.e., “working”).
Contrast those conditions with people today and how much time we spend working (and rarely enjoying that work, if talk around the water cooler is any indication).
Agriculture leads to food storage, which leads to empire, which produces slavery, oppression, and mass murder (all of which were essentially absent for the first couple million years of the human experience). Lives were relatively short, but happy by every measure we can find. In short, without agriculture there’s no environmental overshoot. The human population explosion is effect, not cause.
The industrial revolution exacerbated the problem to such an extent we’ll never be able to recover without historic human suffering. We’re only beginning to witness the impacts of reduced energy supplies on the industrial economy, and on this kind of trajectory, unimpeded by some change, we’ll be squarely in the Stone Age, fully unprepared, within two decades at most.
At this point, our commitment to western culture (i.e., civilization) is so great that any attempt to power down will result in suffering and death of millions, probably billions. Nonetheless, it’s tragically the only way to allow our own species, and millions of others, to persist beyond century’s end and squeeze through the global-change bottleneck resulting from industrialization.
Every day in overshoot is another day to be reckoned with later, and therefore another few thousand people who must live and die in Hobbesian fashion.
There are no decent solutions.
A date with destiny
A collapse in the world’s industrial economy is producing the expected results, finally. Sadly, it’s too late to save thousands of species we’ve sent into the abyss. But perhaps there’s barely time to save a few remaining species, including our own.
If you care about other species and cultures, or even the continued persistence of our own species, then an impressive body of evidence suggests you support our imminent transition to the post-industrial Stone Age. Or whatever it looks like. Such a trip saves the maximum number of human lives, over the long term.
When you realize the (eco)systems in the real world actually produce your food and water, you’ll defend to the death the systems that produces your food and water. I’m in that camp. How about you?
What do you support? The industrial culture of death, which sanctions murderous actions every day? Or the culture of life?
Jb says
February 3, 2011 at 7:23 pmTwo roads diverged in a yellow wood,
And sorry I could not travel both
And be one traveler, long I stood
And looked down one as far as I could
To where it bent in the undergrowth; 5
Then took the other, as just as fair,
And having perhaps the better claim,
Because it was grassy and wanted wear;
Though as for that the passing there
Had worn them really about the same, 10
And both that morning equally lay
In leaves no step had trodden black.
Oh, I kept the first for another day!
Yet knowing how way leads on to way,
I doubted if I should ever come back. 15
I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I—
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.
Guy, you’ve travelled the one less traveled by, and your posting makes ‘all the difference.’ Keep up the great work.
Guy McPherson says
February 3, 2011 at 10:55 pmThanks very much for the kindness of your comment, Jb. Invoking Frost’s poem is the perfect antidote to the regret I might feel for my choice of paths.
jonfkessler says
February 4, 2011 at 7:50 pmWhile I agree that overpopulation is a big problem, I don’t agree it’s the main problem. The impact of 81 citizens of India = one of the USA. I don’t think we should be focusing on population alone, without looking also at resource consumption.
I agree that we’ll have a huge die-off if corporations have their way (Profit first, human life last). Hopefully, through consciousness raising, we can avoid a massive die off. We DO have enough food to feed the world today – not fillet mignon or even chicken every day for everyone, we’ll need to mostly eat plants and use meat as a seasoning (for those who must – I’m vegetarian myself). By eating lower on the food chain – not only do we eat a diet that is healthier for us, but also allows many more to eat – that is, if the food is grown and distributed to the hungry (not used for biofuels that take as much energy to produce as they provide!
One day, perhaps through efforts of websites like this one, most people will know what the world faces if we don’t change our ways. I think they will choose what today is the road less traveled, and someday it will be the road most take.
gus says
February 6, 2011 at 1:35 pmHi,
While I agree the overarching issue is human population growth literally fueled by agriculture, farming by itself is simply a tool and food storage by itself isn’t unique to humans. What’s crucial is the cultural ATTITUDE behind the farming; in our society, that’s a religious (literally and figuratively) mantra of constant expansion based on the conceit that we have the right to do whatever we please, regardless of the overall impact.
Our form of agriculture ISN’T the only one that came into being on Earth — Native Americans & New Guineans, for example, were practicing their own far more sustainable methods when Europeans first encountered them. The key difference was that they saw the fact other species have a right to exist provided they weren’t directly trying to eat their crops or children. Instead of trying to massacre ALL of the wolves in an area, they tried to scare them off or, if necessary, kill the handful who were actually a threat, and even did that with a sense of respect for an equal.
Other than that, I agree with you. I just hope the flailing of our culture during its collapse doesn’t result in nuclear war — almost anything else we do will be repaired by Nature in fairly short order and still allow some of us to survive. Life on Earth will also survive nukes, probably in much simpler & smaller forms for a long time, but humanity and most higher organisms almost certainly won’t. That’s not exactly my idea of a good way to go.
Glenn S says
February 8, 2011 at 12:03 pm“When you realize the (eco)systems in the real world actually produce your food and water, you’ll defend to the death the systems that produces your food and water. I’m in that camp. How about you?”
Care to illustrate what form “defend to death” takes?
Guy McPherson says
February 8, 2011 at 2:11 pm“With respect to the living planet, I’ve placed my picket-pin in this small valley in the southwestern United States, former home to the Apache warrior Geronimo. Like a Cheyenne Dog Soldier, I’ve staked my terrain and will defend it from further insults. This untamed river must remain wild, forever protected from industrial abuses and therefore able to support human life as we enter the post-industrial Stone Age.”
And so on, Glenn S, as I briefly describe here: http://guymcpherson.com/2010/05/what-we-leave-behind/
Janaia Donaldson says
February 11, 2011 at 12:35 am“We’re only beginning to witness the impacts of reduced energy supplies on the industrial economy, and on this kind of trajectory, unimpeded by some change, we’ll be squarely in the Stone Age, fully unprepared, within two decades at most.”
That’s a shorter timeframe and deeper plunge than I’ve encountered in my reading. I am with you on overshoot, agriculture, peak oil, the crash when exponential meets reality, and our unpreparedness. When I interviewed John Michael Greer on Peak Moment TV (“Twilight of an Age”), he suggested civilizations take a hundred or so years to come down, including industrial civilization, even with climate change and peak oil accelerating the collapse. I felt his estimate was hugely optimistic. Can you give me a link or other input as to your prediction of a couple decades to Stone Age?
Guy McPherson says
February 12, 2011 at 11:10 pmJanaia, thanks for your comment and question. Greer’s perspective is ludicrous. he routinely writes about maintaining the industrial economy for centuries, without understanding that we’ll be long extinct if we maintain the industrial economy for half a century.
From one of my essays: “I know no energy-literate person who thinks we’ll be able to avoid the post-industrial Stone Age by 2025. Assuming a conservative 4% annual decline rate of crude oil between now and then indicates we will have access to the same amount of oil in 2025 as we did in 1970, when the planet held half as many people as it now does and the world was considerably less industrialized than it now is. And that’s merely the gross rate of decline, whereas the net rate of decline will be much more rapid because it takes so much energy to extract and deliver energy.” (http://guymcpherson.com/2010/04/what-works-maybe-individual-options/)
From petroleum geologist Kenneth Deffeyes, professor emeritus at Princeton: “By 2025, we’re going to be back in the Stone Age.” (http://www.princeton.edu/hubbert/current-events-06-02.html)
I’d love to help spread the word about the consequences of the ongoing economic and environmental collapses beyond this publication and my blog. If you can help, please contact me at grm@ag.arizona.edu.