Stealth Powerdown
Powerdown is the term used by Richard Heninberg for the best option for the future of the industrialized world to survive the next century. Or I should say it's the ONLY option, the difference being whether we embrace it or fight it. It WILL happen.
http://www.museletter.com/Powerdown.html
I'm basically in agreement that ultimately calls for Powerdown are "Cries in the wildernes" that will never well become mainstream voices necessary for action.
It seems most likely that most people are incapable of imagining something else besides "Like the past and present, but better". Eternal optimists win the day on the strength of their illusions, at least for the indefinite future.
Politics won't "solve" our problems because every realistic solution has demands outside of the acceptability of the majority.
When you live in a world of unlimited growth, where the future always looks brighter, then you're willing to struggle a little now, seeing what's waiting just around the corner.
How do you face a world where the future is in unavoidable decline, where year-after-year, whatever you have now, next year likely will be harder. Every difficulty now will be added to more difficulties later.
The reality of the future probably must be, sooner or later, a "die off" activity for some large portion of humanity. It seems inevitable, a necessary "sacrifice" for future generations. A contradictory perspective at an individual level. Will the "die off" occur because of a new disease, failed harvests, or war. What are those four horseman of the apocalypse?
http://www.answers.com/topic/four-horsemen-of-the-apocalypse
--> pestilence, war, famine, and death
Really that looks like 3 horsemen, and one "clean up crew".
It seems impossible to contemplate any sort of "die off". Sure local famine is yet a fact today, and it would be an interesting graph to see "How many people starved to death in each decade past". All-in-all, it would seem there might be a "steady" level - maybe even 2%/year, and then spikes historically when 10+% of humanity was wiped out in a short period of time.
On the "evolutionary sense", times of mass death are also times where evolution can have an effect. There's lots of room for variations in a population of 6 billion, but the "natural selection" doesn't REALLY kick in to high gear until we lose a good fraction of us.
As an individual, I don't really want to participate in a "die off". I guess I'd rather perish in pestilence or famine than war though. At least there's more democracy in disease and hunger. I mean overall we've all got some chance of making it through if we've got good genes, good luck. Same true for war, but it is just sad to lose out because of violence between peoples.
Hmmmm.. ugly thoughts. I had planned to imagine ways to encourage society to voluntarily powerdown, but too depressed now to continue....
http://www.museletter.com/Powerdown.html
I'm basically in agreement that ultimately calls for Powerdown are "Cries in the wildernes" that will never well become mainstream voices necessary for action.
It seems most likely that most people are incapable of imagining something else besides "Like the past and present, but better". Eternal optimists win the day on the strength of their illusions, at least for the indefinite future.
Politics won't "solve" our problems because every realistic solution has demands outside of the acceptability of the majority.
When you live in a world of unlimited growth, where the future always looks brighter, then you're willing to struggle a little now, seeing what's waiting just around the corner.
How do you face a world where the future is in unavoidable decline, where year-after-year, whatever you have now, next year likely will be harder. Every difficulty now will be added to more difficulties later.
The reality of the future probably must be, sooner or later, a "die off" activity for some large portion of humanity. It seems inevitable, a necessary "sacrifice" for future generations. A contradictory perspective at an individual level. Will the "die off" occur because of a new disease, failed harvests, or war. What are those four horseman of the apocalypse?
http://www.answers.com/topic/four-horsemen-of-the-apocalypse
--> pestilence, war, famine, and death
Really that looks like 3 horsemen, and one "clean up crew".
It seems impossible to contemplate any sort of "die off". Sure local famine is yet a fact today, and it would be an interesting graph to see "How many people starved to death in each decade past". All-in-all, it would seem there might be a "steady" level - maybe even 2%/year, and then spikes historically when 10+% of humanity was wiped out in a short period of time.
On the "evolutionary sense", times of mass death are also times where evolution can have an effect. There's lots of room for variations in a population of 6 billion, but the "natural selection" doesn't REALLY kick in to high gear until we lose a good fraction of us.
As an individual, I don't really want to participate in a "die off". I guess I'd rather perish in pestilence or famine than war though. At least there's more democracy in disease and hunger. I mean overall we've all got some chance of making it through if we've got good genes, good luck. Same true for war, but it is just sad to lose out because of violence between peoples.
Hmmmm.. ugly thoughts. I had planned to imagine ways to encourage society to voluntarily powerdown, but too depressed now to continue....
posted by Ares Olympus at 6:07 PM
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