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Hard Times Ahead
Apr. 1st, 2011 01:15 amHuman civilization is running out of the oil it currently depends on. It is destroying the forests and depleting the fisheries. It is changing the climate with still-increasing CO2 emissions. And it is growing. It is getting harder and harder to extract resources for this civilization, and it is leading to techniques, such as oil-sands extraction and deepwater drilling, with worse and worse effects.
One way or another we are in for hard times ahead.
In the best-case scenario, human civilization devotes the needed resources to switch over to sustainable energy sources and sustainable food production. An economic revolution, including the collapse of capitalism and the state, keeps the plutocracy and the military-torture-prison-industrial complex from drawing off more wealth. A demographic revolution allows the birth rate to fall. A technological revolution allows civilization to adapt to new energy sources. People still face hard times, but civilization survives.
A major revolution will be required. It might look like the Egyptian revolution, but in China, India, America and/or Europe. I think Europe is most likely to accomplish the switchover.
In the most likely scenario, the state remains in power and devotes all its resources to staying in power. All of the current trends continue. By the time it loses power, its environmental destruction and resource depletion has caused mass starvation and reversed the industrial revolution. If human civilization is to recover, it must find new energy sources with fewer resources than before; however, it can still turn to old knowledge and salvaged goods.
A group which prepares for the collapse will be better-able to influence the ideas of post-collapse society. An activist approach which creates working alternatives would save a lot here, and could encourage groups to defect from the ruling institutions and switch tracks from this to a partial approximation of the better case.
In the worst-case scenario, they hit the button. The cities, mines, oilfields, and whatever else they target is destroyed. In this case, there is no salvage. There may be human survivors. There is little prospect of recovery.
There is nothing we can do to prepare for the worst-case scenario. But it is the least likely, if only because it is so terrible.
One way or another we are in for hard times ahead.
In the best-case scenario, human civilization devotes the needed resources to switch over to sustainable energy sources and sustainable food production. An economic revolution, including the collapse of capitalism and the state, keeps the plutocracy and the military-torture-prison-industrial complex from drawing off more wealth. A demographic revolution allows the birth rate to fall. A technological revolution allows civilization to adapt to new energy sources. People still face hard times, but civilization survives.
A major revolution will be required. It might look like the Egyptian revolution, but in China, India, America and/or Europe. I think Europe is most likely to accomplish the switchover.
In the most likely scenario, the state remains in power and devotes all its resources to staying in power. All of the current trends continue. By the time it loses power, its environmental destruction and resource depletion has caused mass starvation and reversed the industrial revolution. If human civilization is to recover, it must find new energy sources with fewer resources than before; however, it can still turn to old knowledge and salvaged goods.
A group which prepares for the collapse will be better-able to influence the ideas of post-collapse society. An activist approach which creates working alternatives would save a lot here, and could encourage groups to defect from the ruling institutions and switch tracks from this to a partial approximation of the better case.
In the worst-case scenario, they hit the button. The cities, mines, oilfields, and whatever else they target is destroyed. In this case, there is no salvage. There may be human survivors. There is little prospect of recovery.
There is nothing we can do to prepare for the worst-case scenario. But it is the least likely, if only because it is so terrible.
