Some thoughts on the coming changes

These days, more and more pundits argue that the enormous rise in global population and the indiscriminate use of non-renewable resources has put us into a position of "overshoot" and that economic and population collapse (and even a collapse of civilization itself) is inevitable. I want to offer up a few thoughts on this set of perceptions.

One of the mistakes I made in my earlier considerations of how the converging crisis of energy, ecology and economics might unfold was to see "collapse and dieoff" as a single monolithic, amorphous process in which "the world" would somehow be uniformly affected. This is of course a ridiculously inaccurate perception, unhelpful and paralyzing.

As the inevitable devolution unfolds it will take differing forms in different regions. My current expectation is that it will behave more like a fragmentation than a crash, with some fragments faring well and others poorly. The evolution of the boundaries between those fragments is hard to predict, but it will certainly have much to do with geography, population densities, wealth and resource distributions, cultural distinctions etc.

What this means is that trying to predict the effects of the crisis in any detail is a mug’s game – the outcome in any region will be dependent on far too many imponderables for us to be any more specific than "some greater or lesser amount of more or less bad stuff will happen to pretty much everyone."

We can predict general trends, like a decline in fossil fuel availability, a general increase in electrical grid instability, or increasing difficulties in food production and distribution, but even using this broad a brush there will inevitably be some regions of the world that will be affected very little while other regions get crushed. We might be able to predict some of the winners and losers with greater confidence, but reality has always been known for its capacity to surprise us with unexpected outcomes.

Even the sizes of the fragments will vary enormously, from small enclaves through provinces to potentially entire countries, all depending on local circumstances.

From this perspective it becomes more difficult to see the coming changes as anything other than an acceleration of "change as usual" in the human condition. More regions will be afflicted with decline and disintegration, but such situations are not new to the human experience, though they will become more widespread.

What may be more noticeable to those of us who have participated directly in the globalization of culture and civilization will be the spreading of the separating fractures that push us back down from the heights of global homogeneity we have grown used to. Our horizons will close in; regional differences will become more visible and pronounced. Speaking ecologically, our civilization will slide back towards being a cultural "climax ecosystem" with greater diversity, though less mass.

I’m convinced that the widespread fears about apocalyptic collapse are largely our ego’s fear of annihilation. Our egoic sense of identity is intimately bound up with and defined through the world in its current form. Any possibility that this form might change threatens our egos with instability and the potential for a loss of identity. This gives rise to inchoate and even irrational fear. That fear is in turn exacerbated by the fact that we (certainly most North Americans and Europeans) are utterly unfamiliar with significant hardship.

Ultimately I think we will be able to do very little to solve or mitigate the effects of the coming transformation. Instead we must think in terms of response and adaptation. As I’ve said before, our best personal defenses will be awareness, adaptability and a penchant for realistic, holistic thinking. In other words, we need to develop personal wisdom.

I'm an ego cornucopian.

typically thoughtful reflections. My less nimble mind has trod through similar thoughts....tho to me one of the biggest wild cards in all of these visions of the likely path of the coming changes is the desperate ability/inclination of people to relocate to areas less impacted by bluntly negative change. Ms Bigmack

I've NO idea what I hit-touched to make that line thru the last part of the above!!!!

and one of the reasons why I'm getting out of Oregon....

Probably a bigger and more immediate problem than whether we have enough batteries for the electric cars.

The only thing I know for sure is that the poorest people will be paying the most. Comfy fat 1st-worlders won't be so physically touched by the waste they've made, not for a while anyway.

My real big fear is fresh water :scared: I'm appreciating it more every day because I know it will be limited someday, probably even fought over.

If we set climate change aside and just look at a decrease in available energy, that's what we're left with. Basically, it will not longer make sense to ship raw materials to China to have goods manufactured and shipped back here, so we've got a return of both local agriculture and production. The limitations on affordable mass production will also be pronounced, because any local manufacturing facility must make less, making units cost more. There will be a big move away from disposable items and cheap stuff. The economic incentives against producing quality goods (planned obsolescence) will disappear.

It would be like the past except for the Internet, which is sustainable. There will be much more info available.

Except there will be a lot less deliberate choice used in establishing the boundaries I foresee, and a lot more force used in securing them.

I expect there will be a lot of involuntary anarcho-primitivism around, and Bookchin would have had a field day (or at least a field trip).

In my opinion the social ecologists have it pretty much right. They understand correctly that the ecological problems caused by man's hierarchic domination of the planet stem from our deeply dysfunctional social systems. My only quibble would be that they still a bit too optimistic about the possibility for preventive change. The guardian institutions of our global culture are simply too strong at the moment to allow any change that would erode their power. Such change will only be possible after a certain degree of social dissolution has loosened their grip on the levers of control. Fortunately, that moment is fast approaching due to Mother Nature's growing nausea and the over-reaching of the world's financiers.

Which is survival. Also, if we strip down to a basic idea of culture, we have something like Richard Dawkins concept of memes, cultural ideas which aid in the survival of the culture. When we put these things together, we have a nation divided by its ecological regions, each with its own methods of survival and therefore its own distinct cultures. OF course, as you say, its more complex than that, but I think the bioregionalism creates a pretty good ground framework for discussing these things...

as people see their foundations being rocked as we saw in the 1930's many will turn to what they perceive as strong leadership to ensure refugees are kept out, military power could be used to ensure that one country obtains access to resources, international conflict could quite easily increase leading to a clamp down of freedom and increasing fascist states.

Not my ideal but as people feel threatened it is one option.

If you look at the early phases of civilization, you find a variety of socio-ecomonic structures - city-states and confederations of city staes, insular countries made up of fifedoms, and empires amalgamated from the two: The trend has been towards fewer and larger structures (the EU, USA, USSR) and all things being equal we could have wound up with just 2 or 3 super-states (think 1984): But large states require a lot of upkeep in terms of transport, military, and an 'unproductive' bureaucracy, which will wind up taking more resources than can be spared - even more so when you're being battered by climate change.

So, reverse the arrow of time: 'Loose' bindings (like the EU, AU and NATO) would be the first to go as countries pull back resources to within their boundaries; then the larger multi-state countries might fragment (goodbye USA, hello Cascadia) then on to a collection of (probably warring) fiefdoms and city-states, and suddenly we're all living in modern versions of Chichen Itza (or Sparta, if you prefer): Maybe a few modern Hanseatic Leagues, if we're lucky: Which ones succeed and fail, and how far down they slide, will depend on the resources within their boundaries, management and luck.

If - and it's a big if - we stop fighting long enough to come up with a suitable energy source then we'll start back up again (with the first owner of the power source becoming the next Roman or British empire). Otherwise, I suspect it's all the way back to the the fifteenth century.

The other question is how long it will take for things to unravel. Off the top of my head I'd guess a century or so, but it might just be FTE...

I wouldn't mind, as long as I get to keep my bicycle.

But seriously, I don't think there is any doubt that humanity in general has had many stable and prosperous prior conditions, and there are no physical barriers to returning to prior stable and prosperous prior conditions other than the baggage of our way of our current worldview. Regional variety and a breakup of large-scale culture into regionalism is very likely, and welcome.

Getting there is another thing...regarding resource use, population, regional self-sufficiency, and virtually every other factor we are currently off the scales of historical precedent, and I only hope that history is not the best guide for how things will play out. Think of Rome in 70 AD, and then Rome in 600 AD...