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http://survivalacres.com/blog/embracing-disaster/

Embracing Disaster

Found over on Fire Earth. The United States is in pretty serious drought conditions. An additional 216 counties have been declared disaster areas. Total is now well over 2000 counties. Virtually ALL of the major food production growing regions are in drought.

But — no reason to worry. The (s)Election seems to be occupying everyone’s attention these days. Romney / Ryan are adamantly against doing anything about climate except drill for more oil. I’m still mystified how that’s going to help however.

Obama on the other hand can’t be trusted to do anything either, so there you have it. A nation in peril, and none at the helm capable of effective response.

Here is what is means:

a) Inaction – has brought us to the brink of total disaster, famine, starvation, war, heat and drought, intolerable mad weather – leading to economic collapse and a potential end to 90% of life on earth.
3) The problems that are taking us to disaster

a) Our emissions of green house gasses to the atmosphere from burning hydrocarbon fuels (oil gas and coal) have to be stopped (we have to get to zero emissions)

b) The worlds current economic structure is driven by the hydrocarbon industry which makes huge profits and is therefore very resistant to change

c) We are allowing Arctic Sea ice to melt which means that more and more heat is being absorbed by the dark open ocean and warming the arctic air, this is accelerating climate change by reducing the temperature gradient between equatorial regions and the Poles leading to a slowing of the Jet Stream and more extreme weather.

d) Much of the security behind corporate and national debt is based on not yet extracted hydrocarbons, oil, gas and coal reserves. If these are extracted it is a 100% certainty that we will kick off runaway climate change. It is very hard to see how civilisation and 90% of life on earth could survive this.

e) Although Earth’s climate is naturally in a state of constant change, the scale and the speed of the change that man has caused to the atmosphere by burning fossil fuels goes massively beyond any of the changes that have occurred in the past 12,000 years. In fact we appear to be changing things faster than happened 57 million years ago when the last great extinction event occurred.

f) The inertia in the system means that whatever we do, further warming and sea level rise is already committed to; therefore adaptation is going to be required.

Please read the linked article, slowly. I’ve only included a small section, you should read the article yourself.

I disagree with several points, as they will actually do next to nothing to help solve the problems. They are:

“Voluntary C02 reductions”
“Bioengineering new crops”
“Nuclear Energy”
No mention of population
No mention of Jevons Paradox (any efficiencies gained will lead to even more consumption)
Emphasis on profits
No mention of corporate control, ie., “ownership” of planetary resources / nations / consumption
Assumptions abound — political “will”, desire, awareness, etc. Expecting the U.S. political system to FINALLY come to their senses (just look around) is absurd, it will NEVER happen.

On the other hand, good to see someone trying to address the issues. I’m not trying to rain on anyone’s parade, identifying some things that could be done is great. My basic “problem” as it were, is the base notion that “humans will change their ways”, voluntarily or by “law”.

When has that ever really worked?

We’re simply not willing to “go backwards” as it is often described. We perceive anything “less” as “bad” and any restrictions as also “bad”. It’s as if we are hard wired to go “forward” always — which means what you think it means — endlessly consume more, not less.

This is a REALLY HUGE ISSUE facing the human race — specifically the advanced “modern” populations living the highly energy intensive / consumptive lifestyles. The rest of the world is as we all know — “trying to catch up to us”. So where is ANY OF THIS BEING ADDRESSED?

That’s how huge the issue is. It means that our so-called “forward progress” and every single proposal I have ever read continues to make the base assumption that we MUST go forward and maintain our lifestyle / standard of living and even energy / food / water / resource consumptions at present or even higher levels then now.

THIS IS NOT POSSIBLE.

7 BILLION CANNOT DO THIS. The Earth cannot support it. Which means that there will always be HUGE variations on how some humans live — and how the REST OF HUMANITY will be permitted to live.

This is EXACTLY the situation we have today. Nations are being repressed and held back by the stronger, more powerful nations, who exploit their labor, resources, minerals, energy and economic conditions — so that THEY can have the “better life”. This WILL NOT CHANGE (it’s what humans DO).

So these pie-in-the-sky hopium proposals are “nice” — but unrealistic as hell. What WILL happen is what IS happening (ie., we are actually doing what we really want — what we want is evident already, proven by what we are now DOING).

Therefore, we are not going to see the desirable changes necessary. If we wanted this — then we would have it — but the truth is harsh — we do NOT want this. A few of us do — but not enough to matter and never in a position to make it happen.

Therefore again, we are not going to achieve any of this. Small baby steps perhaps in the right direction, but nothing even close to the utopia these proposals embrace. Meanwhile, planetary destruction will continue to accelerate far beyond any “improvements” we’re making, because THAT IS WHAT WE ARE NOW DOING.

This is REALITY. This is what is happening RIGHT NOW. This isn’t conjecture — or prophecy — or anything but the harsh painful TRUTH.

And this is what really, really pisses me off. Nobody seems to be capable of addressing the truth of what we are doing to ourselves or how miserable we are at trying to change ourselves or identifying the root causes of the problems we’re facing or how utterly ridiculous it is to say that we are going to voluntarily all change ourselves or go on supporting 7+ billion people in a declining world. If you are paying attention, you will notice that this “support” is declining for all of us — very, very rapidly. It’s ridiculous as hell to assume that this is going to get “better” — virtually ALL of the “low-hanging fruit” has been long-since plucked of the Earth’s tree of plenty, and we are now living on the dregs we’re scraping from the bottom.

Our forward momentum is also politely ignored. Recall that I’ve mentioned inertia a few thousand times on this blog, and how we are only just now experiencing the effects of atmospheric emissions from the 1960′s and 1970′s now? Have you consider the “human inertia” issue also? The runaway freight train of past (and failed) policies, but still in effect, how we make and utilize economic measurements, the endless (and quite stupid) emphasis on “profits”, how population growth and expansion is never once addressed, and how the inexorable “forward progress” of billions of humans is always assumed and embraced?

You should, if this hasn’t occurred to you before, because this is a insurmountable problem. It’s unsolvable by any of the means (“fixes”) I’ve seen. Not a single one of these proposals address any of this effectively. Always the emphasis is on profits, maintenance and improvements of present lifestyles, improved “efficiencies” and even more population. It just doesn’t add up and never will. Profits will always triumph over conservation for example. Placing a monetary “interest” upon critical resources for life puts economics ahead of intrinsic and necessary things of VALUE to life itself.

What is the value of a clean atmosphere? Or clean water? Or unpolluted soil? Or healthy food? Or a radiation free existence? Or a healthy forest? We wrap all this up around profits today, pricing everything accordingly and even consider this despicable practice “normal” for our society. It’s not normal — it’s absurd. It’s bizarre thinking and will always benefit those that CONTROL these resources for PROFIT. YOU don’t control these resources (and never will). The emphasis then is for their “owners” to MAKE MONEY ON THEM somehow, which then means they will ALWAYS be subject to abuse (and how much “money” can be made). They will NEVER be valued for what they really are.

It is this type of thinking that has actually destroyed the Earth, bit by bit over the centuries until we arrive at where we are today. We did just fine when we did not need money, and when we did not claim we “owned” the Earth and it’s resources. We still don’t own it — but we think we do and this is the root problem.

The Earth owns us all, and everything in it. But you have to abandon the brainwashing and conditioning of what you think “ownership” is to understand this. You and I and everyone else here on this planet are GUESTS — to live here and exist but for a very short time and then we are GONE — leaving behind whatever messes and disasters we have created. Or we can be courteous guests and leave no disasters or messes behind, cleaning up after ourselves, taking only what we need and not virtually everything that we want.

This is what at the heart of all these proposals to “fix” the Earth and the many, many problems humans have created. We’ve made a real mess of things and now we’re still trying to apply FAILED human polices and belief systems (such as “profits”) to the problem. They’re all still saying — “Let’s take everything we want and do a better job of it this time”. It’s all BULLSHIT and it didn’t work before, and it will not work now.

There is a better way to live — and we even know how to do it. So far however, industrial civilization and every single of us that live within it hasn’t grasped it yet. But there is really no excuse for this ignorance. We are deliberately turning a blind eye to it on purpose, because we are infused with the “belief” that we can somehow still have it all. It’s clear, some of us can, but not 7+ billion. Not even 5 billion. Or even 3 billion. But I’m not talking about population control / reduction, I’m emphasizing that the concepts and practice of ownership and control will always exploit everyone else and ultimately benefit the few, no matter how many — or how few exist on the planet. We will continue to prey upon each other — and everything else — because that is in point of fact what “we do”.

As long as we think we “own” it — we will never solve our basic problems. As “guests” we are but tenets, and our true task is to leave the place in as good as a condition as we found it, or as the case is today, try to make it better by cleaning it up — but not by embracing even more toxic nuclear waste or endless consumption or over-population, this will only lead to disaster — the place where we are right now.

This is why I title this post “Embracing Disaster” — because we are still doing this, embracing disaster by continuing to apply failed concepts to how we can “guarantee our future” existence on the planet. This approach is FAILURE and guarantees our extinction.

Virtually all paths but one lead to this. There is a better way, but it’s not being considered anymore.