It's remarkable how oblivious we are to how our goods arrive to our stores and homes. The sheer statistics are beyond comprehension, and this frenzy the colonial countries have enjoyed is about to end. Once oil can't be harvested with profit, the party is over, and that day approaches soon. Perhaps it will be extended by drilling in the melting Arctic as permafrost melts, releasing millions of years of stored methane and carbon. That's a fool's game that will push the planet over 3.0° Celsius global temperature rise by 2100, guaranteeing our extinction and that of creatures that don't deserve to be the recipients of our stupidity. The ultra wealthy that have driven this apocalypse will be surprised that killing the slow, balanced workings of the planet will kill them, too. They are all deluded psychopaths without an ounce of humanity among them. We are truly a mistake in evolution.
There’s more worth saying. I’m tuned into the education going on. Humanity is getting it. We were operating on the surface, unaware of how our world runs, which let it fall into crooked hands. Now we are wising up, seeing what’s all around us. It’s a new playing field, that’s step one to a future, which, even taking everything terrible into account, still is uncertain.
If we don’t stop the machine, everything dies. So yeah, double bind… but if it was really actually about necessities, we could provide those locally without nearly the machine that exists. It would just require an astronomical shift of priorities. As the machine fails to provide, this will happen faster.
It's not easy. It's not simple. It won't be complete. Each person's efforts won't be even noticeable in the aggregate.
So why try?
Call it "practice". Call it "training". Call it "preparation".
Most people say, "I can't" when what they really mean is, "I won't".
Ecologists know — established fact — that trophic resource enables fecundity. In short, "Food makes people".
Take this one more step into the abstract: money causes impact.
Paul Ehrlich knew this when he came up with "I = P * A * T" (Impact equals Population times Access to energy — Affluence — times Technology)
So, here's the challenge: REDUCE YOUR INCOME!
"Ouch. I didn't see THAT coming!"
When you have less money, your impact goes down. For example, you start drinking bulk tea or water instead of industrially-produced sugary fluid wrapped in industrially-processed bauxite.
Suddenly, your consumption of Sarah's "multiple Olympic-sized swimming pools" drops to zero. Your participation in Sarah's "fleet of fully loaded tractor-trailer trucks, each carrying several tons of aluminum ingots" drops to zero. Your complicity in the pesticides and herbicides and habitat loss of millions of acres of sugar cane production drops… well, not to zero; we have to reduce your income further before you begin growing food instead of buying it!
But don't do this for "civilization". Don't do this for "the planet". Don't even do it for your own survivability. Do it because it's the only way that things can possibly continue.
A world without money will be much, much closer to sustainability. It won't guarantee it. I'd call it, "A good start."
There is no stopping the machine, and yet the machine will stop. Perhaps it won't stop everywhere, all at once, but collapse comes for everyone eventually.
It's remarkable how oblivious we are to how our goods arrive to our stores and homes. The sheer statistics are beyond comprehension, and this frenzy the colonial countries have enjoyed is about to end. Once oil can't be harvested with profit, the party is over, and that day approaches soon. Perhaps it will be extended by drilling in the melting Arctic as permafrost melts, releasing millions of years of stored methane and carbon. That's a fool's game that will push the planet over 3.0° Celsius global temperature rise by 2100, guaranteeing our extinction and that of creatures that don't deserve to be the recipients of our stupidity. The ultra wealthy that have driven this apocalypse will be surprised that killing the slow, balanced workings of the planet will kill them, too. They are all deluded psychopaths without an ounce of humanity among them. We are truly a mistake in evolution.
There’s more worth saying. I’m tuned into the education going on. Humanity is getting it. We were operating on the surface, unaware of how our world runs, which let it fall into crooked hands. Now we are wising up, seeing what’s all around us. It’s a new playing field, that’s step one to a future, which, even taking everything terrible into account, still is uncertain.
If we don’t stop the machine, everything dies. So yeah, double bind… but if it was really actually about necessities, we could provide those locally without nearly the machine that exists. It would just require an astronomical shift of priorities. As the machine fails to provide, this will happen faster.
We can step off the treadmill.
It's not easy. It's not simple. It won't be complete. Each person's efforts won't be even noticeable in the aggregate.
So why try?
Call it "practice". Call it "training". Call it "preparation".
Most people say, "I can't" when what they really mean is, "I won't".
Ecologists know — established fact — that trophic resource enables fecundity. In short, "Food makes people".
Take this one more step into the abstract: money causes impact.
Paul Ehrlich knew this when he came up with "I = P * A * T" (Impact equals Population times Access to energy — Affluence — times Technology)
So, here's the challenge: REDUCE YOUR INCOME!
"Ouch. I didn't see THAT coming!"
When you have less money, your impact goes down. For example, you start drinking bulk tea or water instead of industrially-produced sugary fluid wrapped in industrially-processed bauxite.
Suddenly, your consumption of Sarah's "multiple Olympic-sized swimming pools" drops to zero. Your participation in Sarah's "fleet of fully loaded tractor-trailer trucks, each carrying several tons of aluminum ingots" drops to zero. Your complicity in the pesticides and herbicides and habitat loss of millions of acres of sugar cane production drops… well, not to zero; we have to reduce your income further before you begin growing food instead of buying it!
But don't do this for "civilization". Don't do this for "the planet". Don't even do it for your own survivability. Do it because it's the only way that things can possibly continue.
A world without money will be much, much closer to sustainability. It won't guarantee it. I'd call it, "A good start."
There is no stopping the machine, and yet the machine will stop. Perhaps it won't stop everywhere, all at once, but collapse comes for everyone eventually.