If you spend any time reading, listening or watching the
modern “intelligentsia,” that is, the range of media from broadcast news,
through talk-radio to internet postings of all stripes, an impression of the
world of human troubles can begin to form: the revolving commercial/political
door, global warming, financial pirates, vacuums of ‘leadership’ and the
laundry list of lies, thefts, genocides, murders, wars without accountability,
waste of money and other resources – it just goes on and on.
From the progressive camps we hear that we must sign
petitions (I get a couple a day from Move On), join and take over the
Democratic Party, stop the XL pipeline, return to full employment and economic
growth and so on. The social forces
of reaction, preach that humans need not consider the actions that they take on
the planet’s biophysical systems because our efforts are too puny to affect
such an infinite place as the earth, and when that argument fails, as in cases
where it is completely clear we have changed some place beyond habitability, we
are told that God has made the earth for us and that ‘He’ will see to our
needs. These are the arguments of
madness regardless of the numbers who believe and support them.
The reality is that we must seriously consider the full
picture of how we are to approach a future in which our actions are so
destabilizing that many of the planet’s biological passengers, as they have
evolved over the last many millennia, will be gone forever in an ecological
paroxysm. What are the conditions that must be meet over the next several years
– economic, ecologic and personal – to accomplish the restabilization of major
environmental processes – biophysical cycles, climate, biodiversity and
ecosystem integration? There are
essentially two levels of consideration: the unalterable general requirements
and the debatable specific actions (I know that I have left out important
considerations from what follows and so I encourage the reader to add to or modify these lists
for themselves).
Mandatory changes:
• Reduction in human use of planetary
resources to a level roughly half, or somewhat less, of what is being used now,
to make the summed total human ecological footprint equal to about ½ of the
earth’s productive capacity (humans are currently using about 1.5 times that
capacity).
• Complete (or nearly complete)
secession of the use of fossil fuels, with the use of non-carbon sources for
energy production as the only viable form of replacement, and ultimately a
return to the capture of the solar flux as our primary energy source.
• Reduction in human population to
about one quarter of the present population over the next several generations,
with a goal of global human population approaching 1 billion by 2100.
• Reduction in the use of biocides and
‘chemical’ fertilizers toward zero levels – or to levels demonstrated
scientifically to pose no threat to biophysical systems.
• Reduction in extractive and
bio-extractive industries, chemical manufacture and general industrialization
activities, including transportation, to levels at which the physical changes
and pollutants created can be absorbed and processed by biophysical systems.
Specific actions (set one options – the “we are all in
this together” model):
• Reorganization of agriculture to
sustain soils, greatly reduce the use of biocides, increase the variety of food
crops along with more widely distributed food production so that total diet can
be derived as much as possible from the local region.
• Much larger percentage of the
population involved in primary food production, at least on a part-time basis,
as response to the reduction in mechanization of farming.
• Literacy and broad, basic education
as an imperative, especially communication, health, economic, political and ecological education
of women.
• Transparency of commercial and
political action attained through an increased availability of full-access,
unmonitored communication systems, especially distributed internet and cellular
technologies, with an emphasis on developing high quality, accurate language translation
software.
• The down-sizing of economic activity
would require that individuals, small groups and immediate communities redevelop the expertise and organization to meet a variety of the primary needs
presently met by industrial production and distribution systems.
• Emphasis on direct democracy enhanced
by both general education and communication capacity. The necessary, but dangerous, trend to localism would need to be
countered by global communication systems and international education goals.
• Capping of private wealth
accumulation to a small multiple of modal wealth, something like 5 to 1. Total community wealth accumulation
also limited by world modal wealth levels, which would be determined by the
maximum sustainable human ecological footprint.
• Modal material wealth must be reduced
slightly, but arithmetic average wealth must be reduced to approximately one
tenth of present levels by large reductions from the high end of the continuum
(paper wealth far exceeds the capacity of the earth to deliver goods and
services and yet that wealth is a demand for such delivery).
• Social expectation for small families
(or extended families with shared children) supported by both the education of
women and the supportive social networks associated with agricultural
activities.
• As difficult as this appears in
today’s zeitgeist, end of life expectation will have to change dramatically.
Devoting significant medical technology and practice to extending life,
devoting a third of our medical expenditures to the last year of life, is
madness. The human body wears out,
gets damaged and is attacked by other living things; this must become, again, a
natural expectation. It will
become more and more important to give our emotional and practical resources,
and understanding, to living with grace and dignity rather than the present extraordinary attempts at living long.
• An emphasis on and acceptance of the
fact that the present human dilemma is the consequence of uninhibited and
uncontrolled expression of our powers to create change; that, fair or not,
“reasonable” or not, the next few generations will have to make the controlled
and inhibition-based changes required to sustain both the species and the
structure of life presently on the planet.
* * *
It can be assumed that those who benefit from the present
distribution (mal-distribution) of wealth will not willing give up such sources
of power, impunity and insanity.
Only great social pressure, even verging on revolution, can bring such
changes. But such is our Catch 22:
actual revolution would violate almost all of the mandatory conditions as well
as throw the whole game into the second set of options.
Specific actions (set two options – the “every man for
himself” model):
• The pathological members of the
political and economic elite (increasingly recognized as a large percentage)
attempt to gain control of as much wealth as possible as rapidly as possible
using it to wall themselves off from the rest of humanity. Private wealth would remain,
essentially, unlimited; human footprint requirements would be met by reducing
the number of people rather than reducing wealth concentration.
• Development of military/policing
systems and technologies for the containment and control of the general
population, along with the increased use of surveillance technologies.
• Domination of media and information
sources, increased secrecy in both commercial and political institutions and
the denial of communication frameworks and platforms for the general
population.
• The expansion of a variety of
totalitarian forms of governance in actuality, regardless of what they are
called, but all based on oligarchy and plutocracy.
• Population reduction by “natural
attrition” can be encouraged by economic isolation and the withholding of
essential needs. Accompanying
plans to allow great population
reduction can be reinforced with various chemical and biological agents if need
be.
• The incitement of internal and
external conflicts that both aid in wealth concentration and serve as a
distraction from the discovery of genuine self-interest among the multitudes.
• Economic models based on several
different forms of forced labor increasingly put into place. The fact that in today’s economic
design almost no one can, by their own hand, meet their most basic needs gives
those in control of the money-based production and distribution system huge
leverage to extract the labor desired on any terms that allow life to continue.
Summary:
The mandatory conditions could be met by either option one
or option two, but is more likely to be met by option one, if it could be
enacted, since option two contains violent deviations from Reality and the
constant danger of internal disruption leading away from essential action.
Reaction today will only forestall any meaningful response
other than supporting option two by omission. Ultimately, my only objection to
the progressive approach is the focus on specific projects while remaining
committed to present habits and understanding on almost everything else. This is a prescription for running
around in circles.
The plutocratic oligarchs do not require a change in
understanding, reorganization or new outreach. Business as usual for them is the road to option two. They don’t need to rethink the insane
reality in which they reside.
The Great Many have it all to lose, either because they are
enslaved by the plutocrats or because the earth’s systems convulse before
corrective changes can be made in, first, our beliefs and attitudes and then in
our actions.
How to accomplish these things (in option one) is unclear,
but the first step could not be more clear: these ideas must be spread widely,
argued, understood and made part of a great many people’s acceptance and
expectation for their future. Only
then will the synergy for action, sufficiently effective and powerful to oppose
option two, be possible. The
strongest force in the human world is an idea that a critical mass of people
understand, accept and expect to be made real.
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