There is no quick fix or silver bullet
We
can’t solve problems by using the same kind of thinking
we used when we created them
- Albert Einstein
The chief cause
of problems is solutions
- Eric Sevareid
Ultimately, we're not going to magically transcend the natural limits to growth imposed by a finite planet using science, technology and markets or by worshiping the God or presidential candidate of your choice.
That's not to say that science, technology, economics, community and government aren't important parts of our future. They will no doubt play invaluable roles but they are not answers unto themselves individually or collectively.
The finite planet reality we inhabit is a situation to be adapted to, not a problem to be solved.
A real, practical, effective and proven adaptation lies in the maturity of actually living within our planetary means. This is infinitely easier said than done. Especially for Americans who belive it is their birthright as 5 percent of the world's population to exploit, depending on the resource, anywhere between 25 and 50 percent of the world's resources. Not to mention the paper tigers of China and India roaring in futilty to copy our woeful example.
What could living within planetary resource limits mean for us? On a regional or national level, James Howard Kunstler references some worthwhile stragegies in Disarray. And Dmitry Orlov's Closing The Collapse Gap should be required reading for every American.
It could mean living within a resource budget. It could mean the Oil Depletion Protocol. The Blue Covenant. The Great Turning. Or the Transition Town Movement. It could mean living according to a given region's carrying capacity (as opposed to our current Dependence on Phantom Carrying Capacity). It could mean -- in the case of air travel, for exmple, as it relates to peak oil and climate change -- no more frivolous and unnecessary air(1) travel(2). It could mean slowing down the currently absurd pace of modern life. It could mean scaling down the human enterprise to smaller, saner and more sustainable and communal sizes which could have the additional potential benefit of creating lives more psychologically rewarding and spiritually satisfying.
I say it "could mean" this, that or the other because I harbor no illusions about the ability or willingness of modern humans en masse to recognize, let alone strive toward, such evolutionary maturation.
In America, for example, we love to talk about "personal responsibility" but we have no stomach for taking responsibiltiy for our rapacious, deleterious and unsustainable consumption.
Michael Ventura, in his 2005 article titled, If New Orlenas Were Dry, has written my favorite passage about this subject:
"Most people reading this are haves. So am I. We are implicated. It is written in the Tao te Ching: 'Prosperity rests on disaster; disaster is hidden in prosperity.' This is true of our prosperity, whether Republicans or Democrats rule Congress and the White House. If our leaders are criminals that should come as no surprise, for we live on theft. We've invented polite words for our theft ('capitalism,' 'the global economy,' 'the free market'), but in fact it takes a lot of muscle and legalized theft for 5% of Earth's population to gobble 50% of its resources. Our way of life is a criminal enterprise, and it takes criminals to run it. For more than a century we've depended upon thinly veiled criminality for our good fortune, and we damn well are implicated.
"Which is the underlying reason most Americans want to know nothing about their governance. To know would be to admit responsibility. To admit responsibility would put one in the moral dilemma of either taking action toward a more just world and thereby ultimately undermining one's own prosperity, or ignoring it all in the desperate attempt to live happily ever after. Many will believe anything that allows their fearful desperation to pose as righteous happiness. Any lie is welcome, and those who point out the lies are mightily resented. Democrats are as loath as Republicans to face the real problem. George W. Bush and the right-wing cabals cause tremendous and needless suffering, but they are not the fundamental problem. The problem is the way we sustain ourselves. The way we sustain ourselves causes much more suffering than Bush does. The way we sustain ourselves has brought disorder to every corner of the world and undermined the viability of the planet itself. Collectively, we are the maddened coven.
"But we are also harried people trying to live our lives and cause no harm. That contradiction is the root of our madness: We are mostly good people sustaining ourselves in a manner that does great harm and evil, and we're stuck there – unable to face the contradiction. Even when we try to face it we are without the concepts or the means to right the situation. So we complain about politicians and argue about evolution. Doubtless, better leaders would do less harm, and it would be a boon if science could be taught freely in our schools. But rotten politicians are an effect of the problem, not its cause. Desperate fundamentalism is an effect, not a cause. The cause of the general chaos is the way we sustain ourselves. The fearsome imbalances in society and in nature result from our means of sustenance."
So fear not good people, we are not voluntarily going to give up our luxurious toys and our not-negotiable way of life.
But I think it's important to point out that our way of life has consequences, as Ventura warns in the article's closing paragraph, "We've chosen not to face the facts, and that only makes the facts meaner. The facts are about to face us."
