It is 50 years since the Club of Rome published the famous “Limits to Growth” which, contrary to the propaganda spewed out by the billionaire and fossil-fuel funded think-tanks, made no predictions - but offered 12 scenarios about the world
Dona Meadows was one of the report’s principal authors (with her husband Dennis) and did a 30 year update which is summarised here. The book deals with an issue which affects us all – but in different ways depending on where we live. But even rich people – in Australia, France and the US – are now experiencing the floods and fire which indicate that we have reached too far. But the world has been strangely quiet about the book’s 50th anniversary
Dona Meadows died sadly in 2001 but was a marvellous woman who wrote the most accessible book about systems - “Thinking in Systems – a primer” (2008) and this powerful little essay helpful to anyone seriously interested in change - Leverage Points.
Those of you who prefer
videos will be moved by this
presentation of hers from 1993 when she threw away her notes to address an
issue which was lurking in the lecture hall full of technocrats like the
veritable elephant – namely the need for vision and the difficulties scientific
people have in speaking about dreams and hopes rather than problems. It’s a
superb performance – quiet but authoritative – and well worth watching. And she
has a short
note which captures the essence of the talk here.
In 2019 her husband Dennis did an equally powerful presentation which started with a memorable invitation to the audience to cross their arms and learn a lesson about the difficulties of changing our habits.
And that’s the central
question – why we seem unable to accept the evidence that’s been so obvious for
at least the last decade that our present habits are simply not sustainable? It
took me some time to pose this question – and to be open to the need to better
understand the way our minds work
And I was impressed with this recent story of someone who gave up a well-paying job in the financial sector in his early 50s to join Extinction Rebellion – to realise that he simply didn’t understand the financial system That duly led me to this paper “A map for navigating climate tragedy” by academic activist Jem Bendell (2018)
Have professionals in the sustainability field discussed the possibility that it is too late to avert an environmental catastrophe and the implications for their work? A quick literature review revealed that my fellow professionals have not been publishing work that explores, or starts from, that perspective. Why not? I looked at psychological analyses, held conversations with colleagues, reviewed debates amongst environmentalists in social media and self-reflection on my own reticence - concluding that there is a need to promote discussion about the implications of a societal collapse triggered by an environmental catastrophe.
I then asked another question – How do people talk about collapse on social media. I identified a variety of conceptualisations and from that asked myself what could provide a map for people to navigate this extremely difficult issue. For that, I drew on a range of reading and experiences over my 25 years in the sustainability field to outline an agenda for what I have termed “deep adaptation” to climate change.
I am new to the topic of societal collapse and wish to define it as an uneven ending of our normal modes of sustenance, shelter, security, pleasure, identity and meaning.
The article summarises what I consider to be the most important climate science of the last few years and how it is leading more people to conclude that we face disruptive changes in the near-term. It then explains how that perspective is marginalised within the professional environmental sector – and so invite you to consider the value of leaving mainstream views behind. And outlines the ways that people in relevant social networks are framing our situation as one of facing collapse, catastrophe or extinction and how these views trigger different emotions and ideas. I outline a “Deep Adaptation Agenda” to help guide discussions on what we might do once we recognise climate change is an unfolding tragedy. Finally, I make some suggestions for how this agenda could influence our future research and teaching in the sustainability field…..
Significantly, the same month that saw the story of the financial expert brought forward another confession from scientists who had suddenly realised that the techno-optimists were peddling dangerous delusions
Background Reading
Was given in the annotated
bibliographies of two previous posts
https://nomadron.blogspot.com/2021/11/is-patriotism-answer.html
https://nomadron.blogspot.com/2019/07/what-is-wrong-with-us.html
I'm afraid I disagree with the premise of the argument, and so also with the conclusion. The premise simply repeats the old myths of Malthusianism. Much of the world's desertification arose long before the development of capitalism or industrialism, and industrial farming. Most of the worst agricultural practices, today, continue to be where its conducted by subsistence peasants, who need to farm extensively to maximise what they can get out of the land, as they lack even things like drainage and irrigation, ability to do crop rotation, use fertiliser and so on.
ReplyDeleteIn the 19th century, Marx using the data of actual farmers like Scottish farmer, James Anderson, showed that whilst the growth of capitalism/industrialism in the towns put strains on existing pre-capitalist agriculture to provide the food and materials required, and so also led to such over farming and so on, it was then, also capitalism, introduced into agriculture, which resolved that crisis, and enabled a much more rational use of the land, an increase in productivity, and much more sustainable use of the land.
In the 1950's, Colin Clark demonstrated that if all agriculture was undertaken on the same basis as was undertaken in Denmark, i.e. same levels of productivity/capitalisation, even the land then in cultivation could feed a population several times that of the world several times over, to the same level as that enjoyed by Danes. The clue to that was more development not less, was raising the level of productivity by greater capitalisation.
The same thing can be seen with the use of oil. Everywhere, development has raised productivity, and so efficiency, so that we are able to get more oil and gas, but also to use it much more efficiently. With materials, we use them more efficiently, but we've also developed entirely new ones, and synthetics. All of that is a consequence of development not attempts to hold development back.
As someone who grew up in the 1950's, I have to say that I look around and see an environment that is much better today than it was then, and all down to the effects of further development that made possible changes in the way production was undertaken, in the ability to provide solutions to various problems, not the least in relation to health and well being. Yet, these same arguments about needing to slow down growth, and the unsustainable nature of growth were being made back then too, as Malthusians have done for the last 200 years.
Its not growth that is a problem, but that those where its most needed in poorer countries are least able to achieve it because they lack capital, and the lack of democratic control over the means of achieving the required growth by workers, so that instead it is focused on profit.
Always a pleasure to get a comment from you, Boffy - although in this instance I'm a bit baffled by your "friendly fire". I didn't expect such an "all's right with the world" (Stephen) Pinker response from you of all people - although I'm not sure if such rhetorical flourishes as "Malthusian" add a great deal to the argument. Your last sentence seem to contain the crux - namely that the solution is for the poor to get access to capital and power. So we do indeed seem doomed
ReplyDeleteI'm not sure what you mean by "friendly fire" in this instance. Nor did I suggest that "all's right with the world", as the last sentence illustrates.
DeleteHowever, I am a Marxist and not a Sismondist or Malthusian, and in line with Marx's critique of their "anti-capitalism", and similarly Lenin's critique of the reactionary, petty-bourgeois economic romanticism of the Narodniks - see my series https://boffyblog.blogspot.com/2020/03/lenin-on-economic-romanticism-main-index.html - I am not an "anti-capitalist" or "anti-imperialist". I am a pro-socialist, and so modernist, who sees the road to the future running through the modernism and rationalism that capitalism provides, its development of the productive forces, and creation of the working-class that will act as the agent of change bringing it about.
I most certainly do not see holding back capitalist development as a progressive alternative to capitalism, because as Marx pointed out in response to Sismondi, and Lenin pointed out in relation to the Narodniks, what went before was much worse. The experience of the people of Cambodia with Pol Pot, or Iran with the mullahs, and so on, are ample evidence of that, as would be a return of the landlords and clergy in Tibet, and so on.
And, no I do not see the fact that workers (the poor is a bad label, as there are many reactionary poor classes) need to get access to capital and power as meaning we are doomed. Its one reason I'm not an anti-imperialist, in the same way that Lenin wanted imperialism to invest in post revolution Russia, Trotsky argued for Cardenas to attract imperialist investment in Mexico and so on. Eastern and central Europe, not to mention Asia, Latin America and now Africa shows the capacity for such investment to bring about rapid changes, development of productive forces, creation of large organised working-classes and so on, and I see current developments with global labour shortages, heralding a new period, not like the 1970's as the lazy media suggest, but more like the late 1950's, early 60's, when such conditions saw a renaissance of labour movements and flowering of grass roots, rank and file organisation by emboldened workers, and a resurgence of ideas.
that's very helpful - I'll certainly try to look at the link you suggest
ReplyDeleteRonald,
ReplyDeleteThe basic philosophy outlined and detailed in that series of posts can be summarised in this quote from one of the articles by Lenin.
“The enlightener believes in the present course of social development, because he fails to observe its inherent contradictions. The Narodnik fears the present course of social development, because he is already aware of these contradictions. The “disciple” believes in the present course of social development, because he sees the only earnest of a better future in the full development of these contradictions. The first and last trends therefore strive to support, accelerate, facilitate development along the present path, to remove all obstacles which hamper this development and retard it. Narodism, on the contrary, strives to retard and halt this development, is afraid of abolishing certain obstacles to the development of capitalism. The first and last trends are distinguished by what may be called historical optimism: the farther and the quicker things go as they are, the better it will be. Narodism, on the contrary, naturally tends to historical pessimism: the farther things go as they are, the worse it will be.”
(Lenin, The Heritage We Renounce, p 525)