Please copy the existing format if you have a comment to add. i.e. add a section with a short phrase from the essay itself, and link it in from the main essay:
Contents
Energy
Proving current oil dependency and then dismissing each alternative energy source individually as an inadequate replacement is easy. Too easy. New technology always looks too difficult, too expensive, and insufficient. A century ago, one could have argued persuasively that oil could never replace coal.
We know that the current level of carbon-based energy consumption is unsustainable environmentally, even if we had centuries more supply available. Consumption must be reduced. The author of Imminent Collapse falls into the trap of assuming that all current energy consumption is essential and any reduction of it must therefore be a disaster. An intelligent discussion of society's plight would examine which uses of energy are essential to human lives and which ones are unnecessary, serving mainly as a way to enrich a tiny minority.
One such unnecessary use of energy is the private automobile. A better organized society with adequate public transport would provide similar mobility to people for much less consumption of fossil fuels and materials. But this would also mean the extinction of entire industries: automobile insurance, car dealerships, repair shops, parts manufacturing, drive-through fast food outlets, car washes, parking lots, and so on. Popular belief in the necessity of the change would have to be strong enough to overcome the opposition of all of these entrenched interests. As part of that, the many people displaced by the change would have to be found new meaningful social roles. None of this is easy.
J.C.
Permaculture
To say that permaculture has "value only as desperate attempt to solve an underlying problem that has never been addressed in a more direct manner" is to be deceived by industrial agriculture squad and the much trumpeted 'green revolution'. In terms of net total productivity per acre in the long term, organic farming exceeds the productivity of chemical input farming, and adds to rather than draws down soil productivity (Need a good reference on this? One straw revolution?) Quite a lot of the 'green revolution' was fraudulent science, designed to disenfranchise small subsistence farmers for political purposes? (Again, this is a strong statement which needs a decent source to back it up).
R.U.
Overpopulation
Overpopulation is pretty easily solved by educating and economically/democratically empowering women in cultures with high birth rates.
The population bomb myth has been funded by corporations (for example Chevron has donated to Paul and Anne Erlich to support their bogus population scare agenda) and has also been recently been amplified by extremely active involvement on the part of white supremacist groups.
On this latter point see 'The Greening of Hate' at: http://www.splcenter.org/greenwash-nativists-environmentalism-and-the-hypocrisy-of-hate/the-greening-of-hate-an-essay
The hidden agenda of all this obfuscation is to get people to focus on and lay blame around, the personal responsibility of poor unempowered individuals, instead of focusing on and stopping the out of control multinational corporate dominance and world pillage that is responsible for the collapsed economies and lack of education, especially of women, in countries and communities that they are exploiting; all which then leads to an exploding population. A population which they then conveniently point to as the problem, to deflect us from holding corporations and governments accountable to creating real -systemic- solutions to global crises.
E.B.
overpopulation in one country
"overpopulation in one country leads to immigration, which in turn leads to overpopulation in another country; the onus of responsibility therefore lies on poor countries, not rich ones."
This an unfair passing of the population buck. Why are 'rich' countries 'rich'? Generally because they acquired weapons first and imposed their will on the 'poor' ones. Whether this was done by direct force of arms or whether by the implied violence of a global financial and political system (such as through economic hit men matters little). The money of 'rich' countries gives them no moral right to consume resources in my book.
"And in any case, spreading the misery out universally can hardly be considered a solution, no matter how anyone tries to juggle the figures." assumes that there will be misery, supporting the consumption=good, less consumption=suffering equations on which this essay seems to be based. What happened to 'a problem shared is a problem halved'?
exercise in futility
"To speak against overpopulation is an exercise in futility."
To my mind, one consumer who doesn't produce is an overpopulation of one. People who argue that overpopulation is the problem never question their own right to exist at the expense of the labor of others. First, allow people to own their own resources and governments, thereby owning the products of their own labor. Overpopulation would then solve itself - but maybe not in the way he imagines. We, for instance, would be doomed.
T.C.
Crop yields are far lower
"Crop yields are far lower in societies that do not have fossil fuels or modern machinery. We should therefore have no illusions that several billion humans can be fed by “organic gardening” or anything else of that nature."
Is this true? Have we got a reference for this? Does it perhaps reflect the fact that permaculture is a multi-cropping system, so that because many different things are grown at the same time, the actual yield of any one of them is lower than it would be if the land were devoted exclusively to that crop?
R.U.
According to the World Hunger Education Service 2010 statistics [1] the world produces 17% more calories per person now than 30 years ago despite a 70% increase in population. This is more than adequate to feed everyone. By their analysis, the causes of hunger are not overpopulation but harmful economic systems that control the use of resources and access to income, benefiting a small minority.
People's Food Sovereignty Now! writes in their 2009 Declaration [2] that most of the world's food is not produced by industrial megafarms. 75 percent of the world's food is produced by 1.5 billion small farmers. The hunger problem is not caused by low yields. The world has 6 billion people and produces enough food for 9 billion people. There are now 1.02 billion hungry people in the world (nearly 50 million in the US). At the same time, there are 1 billion people who are overweight, many who are obese and suffer from diet-related diseases. Hunger and obesity are the result of the overproduction of toxic junk food, the scarcity of healthy organic food, and injustice in the way farmland and food are distributed.
T.C.
universal poverty
"The unequal distribution of resources plays a part. The average inhabitant of the United States consumes far more than the average inhabitant of India or China. Nevertheless, if all the world's resources were evenly distributed, the result would only be universal poverty."
Whatever they may get in dollars per day, many people in Bangladesh live a dignified life from the land through their own effort, with a higher degree of autonomy than a lot of people in US or other so-called 'developed' countries - which doesn't fit my idea of poverty. So by what definition would a sharing out of resources result in universal poverty? Do obese Americans have a greater need for food than Bangladeshis? The inequality of other resource consumption is even more unequal, so to assert that "if all the world's resources were evenly distributed, the result would only be universal poverty." requires a highly self-serving, American-centric definition.
R.U.
genuine science
"To believe that a non-petroleum infrastructure is possible, one would have to imagine, for example, solar-powered machines creating equipment for the production and storage of electricity by means of solar energy. This equipment would then be loaded on to solar-powered trucks, driven to various locations, and installed with other solar-powered devices, and so on, ad absurdum and ad infinitum. Such a scenario might provide material for a work of science fiction, but not for genuine science."
The author is correct that a non-petroleum infrastructure would require a bunch of big changes, but we do not have an exclusively petroleum based infrastructure even now. Instead it is a hybrid infrastructure; what we're really talking about is a shift in the balance of motive power sources, away from petrochemicals towards alternatives such as solar, wind or use of domesticated animals. Considering that humans have always used a dynamic mix of whatever power sources were available, his relegation of it to science fiction is overly dismissive.
R.U.
hundreds rather than billions
"people will be counted in groups of hundreds rather than billions, and the kingdoms of the distant future will be the size of our present counties."
Excuse me? Having just watched The Road I agree with the author's remarks about the impact of post-apocolyptic movies. However, I feel like the author's own consciousness is shaped here. Just what kind of die-off is he anticipating?
R.U.
resources
As Derrick Jensen points out, the word 'resource' is not really a neutral word, since it frames the debate in terms of humans as a burden on the planet. Anyway, the author uses the word in 2 contradictory ways in the concluding section.
- In the first paragraph: "The greatest “resource” of all will be the knowledge inside one's own head."
- In the last paragraph: "Of course the difference between AD 1000 and 10,000 BC is obvious: at the earlier time, there was an excellent ratio between population and resources."
This contradiction goes to the heart of this in some ways well researched essay. Are humans a burden on the planet, one which must be largely eliminated to fit the patterns which extend to the rest of the animal kingdom? Or could the human mind allow humans to exist on this planet in ways which transcend the patterns observed by other animal species? If 'The greatest “resource” of all' is really 'the knowledge inside one's own heads', should technologies such as WWW be factored in?
R.U.
Conclusion
(Summarise the take home message from this episode)
- Sustainability - This is not a yes/no binary choice, but there is a continuum. How sustainable is solar? 10 years? 50 years? 200 years? What about the modern technology that is created under the consumerist system?
- (Over)population - This is not to be taken as a given. The elite/plutocrats have a vested interest in pushing this agenda, and have had for a long time. So sober consideration is advised
- Technology - Is it a game changer that alters the patterns we've seen up to now? If so, how? Is the largest of these perhaps the notion of human consciousness - a coming together?