Brad H
Admin
From the SCNCC Listserve: Bill H shares an article published today in Resilience.org:
Why Climate Change Isn’t Our Biggest Environmental Problem, and Why Technology Won’t Save Us
By Richard Heinberg, originally published by Post Carbon Institute
• August 17, 2017 Why Climate Change Isn’t Our Biggest Environmental Problem, and Why Technology Won’t Save Us - Resilience
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Gene C replies:
I have been following Richard Heinberg’s postings for about 12 or 15 years. For two or three years I attended monthly meetings of a Bay Area “Peak Oil” group. I’d worked where I learned a lot about the oil industry and didn’t believe in peak oil, but I wanted to understand the interest. I won’t describe those meetings in any detail. I was shocked by the participants at the beginning, thinking I’d fallen in with a group of survivalists. As I became familiar with the regular attendees I became more comfortable. Individuals drawn to the group due to concern about climate change, as I was, with the understanding that fossil fuel consumption played a major part in that, gradually drifted away. I stayed as the others left. The main thrust was that climate change was a concern for 2090 and beyond, while oil was about to run out — the various dates have come and gone — and civilization would fall into chaos when the peak occured. "100 million Americans will have to die” was often expressed, and population control was the hidden heart of analysis.
As I read today’s version of Richard Heinberg I see he has two two recommendations to save the environment. 1. Voluntary Simplicity. It is clear that voluntary simplicity has and will produce close to nothing for the environment. If the system is forcing us to be consumers, how can we voluntarily not be?
Heinberg’s second recommendation is: 2. population control. He has become more forthright about expressing this recently. Population control is non-threatening to the system, for it will be applied to others.
I’ve followed Heinberg’s analysis through “peak oil” — then, beginning with and for a few years after the 2008 financial crash, "peak debt”. The world was running out of debt, according to Heinberg! Peak oil was plausible but peak debt is laughable.
I agree with him that technology won’t save us. But he offers instead numbers 1. and 2. above, nothing else.
I’ve been cautioned by John Horan about criticizing Heinberg. I’m disappointed, nevertheless, that such a shallow thinker is held up, again and again, as expressing useful ideas.
Notice that I am nor criticizing Resilience, though Heinberg unfortunately looms large in that baliwick.
Gene
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Kamran replies:
Let me add my two cents. The Overshoot argument is valid insofar as it does describe what has been happening from a systems theory perspective. Thus, Heinberg's opening paragraph is valid insofar as it goes.
But systems theory applies to all historical situations. We know there have been other ecological overshoots as civilizations have collapsed in the past beginning with the first, the Sumer civilization that collapsed due to salination of the soil which provided it with its livelihood. The question is what specificity of the socioeconomic formation is that leads to the ecological crisis and (possible) collapse. The systems theorists pay no attention to this crucial question. Why Heiberg does not cite capitalism as the culprit is unknown to me. Other Overshoot and Limits to Growth thinkers, like Ted Trainer, clearly argue that capitalism is responsible for the crisis.
Like Heinberg, I have also advocated voluntary simplicity and population control. But as an eco-centric ecological socialist, I have taken pains to explain why these can only be achieved in an all-out struggle against the anthropocentric industrial capitalist world economy. That is the elephant in the room that must be acknowledged as the problem if we can have any hope in our fight to save the world.
For the Earth,
Kamran
PS. Heinberg and I live within 8-10 miles of each other. I am hoping we can meet over coffee so I can learn about his views on questions raised above. We must engage each other, build unity in action, and work together as soon as possible. The world cannot wait.
-------
Richard Smith replies:
Eugene,
1. You’re right. Voluntary simplicity under capitalism = mass unemployment. A great solution (If he’d read my “Beyond growth or beyond capitalism” article he couldn’t make such a dumb argument).
2. Population. He’s right. There are way too many people, obviously (especially in my neighborhood in Manhattan). But populations are already collapsing in Africa with four simultaneous famines going on right now and as the planet heats up food production is going to collapse not only in South East and South Asia and vast swathes of Africa but in parts of the United States and not in the next century but in the next decades. That will “solve” the population problem but it won’t get us a viable sustainable economy. For that we have to replace capitalism.
So let’s debate this guy.
-Richard
______
Bill H replies:
Good idea to get together with Heinberg - this is what needs to happen on a broader scale if we are to have the consilience diagnosis now required. Take a look at the Lotka-Volterra model of predator and prey interactions and consider limits to growth and overshoot. And I'll reiterate that capitalism is but one strand of the process behind our two centuries of exponential growth. Plus we will need to harness the innovation/investment engine to mitigate climate without collapse..
_____
Richard Smith replies:
Dear Bill,
With all due respect, and I know it’s really difficult to let go of the tech fetishism of capitalism that we’ve all been raised in and lived in, but the fact is, I don’t think we need to invent much more of anything. We don’t need new tech solutions or much new investment. What we need to do for a start is stop the economic growth machine not replace it with a “green” growth machine based around new tech miracles, new innovations, new investments to bring them to market, and so on. We need to just stop growth and shut down much of our industrial economy. If we had suppressed emissions and resource consumption decades ago we wouldn’t be facing the climate emergency we face now. But we didn’t and haven’t and so now we have no choice but to slam on the brakes from here to China, substantiall deindustrialize, and figure out how to reorganize a viable sustainable society.
Richard
Why Climate Change Isn’t Our Biggest Environmental Problem, and Why Technology Won’t Save Us
By Richard Heinberg, originally published by Post Carbon Institute
• August 17, 2017 Why Climate Change Isn’t Our Biggest Environmental Problem, and Why Technology Won’t Save Us - Resilience
_____
Gene C replies:
I have been following Richard Heinberg’s postings for about 12 or 15 years. For two or three years I attended monthly meetings of a Bay Area “Peak Oil” group. I’d worked where I learned a lot about the oil industry and didn’t believe in peak oil, but I wanted to understand the interest. I won’t describe those meetings in any detail. I was shocked by the participants at the beginning, thinking I’d fallen in with a group of survivalists. As I became familiar with the regular attendees I became more comfortable. Individuals drawn to the group due to concern about climate change, as I was, with the understanding that fossil fuel consumption played a major part in that, gradually drifted away. I stayed as the others left. The main thrust was that climate change was a concern for 2090 and beyond, while oil was about to run out — the various dates have come and gone — and civilization would fall into chaos when the peak occured. "100 million Americans will have to die” was often expressed, and population control was the hidden heart of analysis.
As I read today’s version of Richard Heinberg I see he has two two recommendations to save the environment. 1. Voluntary Simplicity. It is clear that voluntary simplicity has and will produce close to nothing for the environment. If the system is forcing us to be consumers, how can we voluntarily not be?
Heinberg’s second recommendation is: 2. population control. He has become more forthright about expressing this recently. Population control is non-threatening to the system, for it will be applied to others.
I’ve followed Heinberg’s analysis through “peak oil” — then, beginning with and for a few years after the 2008 financial crash, "peak debt”. The world was running out of debt, according to Heinberg! Peak oil was plausible but peak debt is laughable.
I agree with him that technology won’t save us. But he offers instead numbers 1. and 2. above, nothing else.
I’ve been cautioned by John Horan about criticizing Heinberg. I’m disappointed, nevertheless, that such a shallow thinker is held up, again and again, as expressing useful ideas.
Notice that I am nor criticizing Resilience, though Heinberg unfortunately looms large in that baliwick.
Gene
____
Kamran replies:
Let me add my two cents. The Overshoot argument is valid insofar as it does describe what has been happening from a systems theory perspective. Thus, Heinberg's opening paragraph is valid insofar as it goes.
But systems theory applies to all historical situations. We know there have been other ecological overshoots as civilizations have collapsed in the past beginning with the first, the Sumer civilization that collapsed due to salination of the soil which provided it with its livelihood. The question is what specificity of the socioeconomic formation is that leads to the ecological crisis and (possible) collapse. The systems theorists pay no attention to this crucial question. Why Heiberg does not cite capitalism as the culprit is unknown to me. Other Overshoot and Limits to Growth thinkers, like Ted Trainer, clearly argue that capitalism is responsible for the crisis.
Like Heinberg, I have also advocated voluntary simplicity and population control. But as an eco-centric ecological socialist, I have taken pains to explain why these can only be achieved in an all-out struggle against the anthropocentric industrial capitalist world economy. That is the elephant in the room that must be acknowledged as the problem if we can have any hope in our fight to save the world.
For the Earth,
Kamran
PS. Heinberg and I live within 8-10 miles of each other. I am hoping we can meet over coffee so I can learn about his views on questions raised above. We must engage each other, build unity in action, and work together as soon as possible. The world cannot wait.
-------
Richard Smith replies:
Eugene,
1. You’re right. Voluntary simplicity under capitalism = mass unemployment. A great solution (If he’d read my “Beyond growth or beyond capitalism” article he couldn’t make such a dumb argument).
2. Population. He’s right. There are way too many people, obviously (especially in my neighborhood in Manhattan). But populations are already collapsing in Africa with four simultaneous famines going on right now and as the planet heats up food production is going to collapse not only in South East and South Asia and vast swathes of Africa but in parts of the United States and not in the next century but in the next decades. That will “solve” the population problem but it won’t get us a viable sustainable economy. For that we have to replace capitalism.
So let’s debate this guy.
-Richard
______
Bill H replies:
Good idea to get together with Heinberg - this is what needs to happen on a broader scale if we are to have the consilience diagnosis now required. Take a look at the Lotka-Volterra model of predator and prey interactions and consider limits to growth and overshoot. And I'll reiterate that capitalism is but one strand of the process behind our two centuries of exponential growth. Plus we will need to harness the innovation/investment engine to mitigate climate without collapse..
_____
Richard Smith replies:
Dear Bill,
With all due respect, and I know it’s really difficult to let go of the tech fetishism of capitalism that we’ve all been raised in and lived in, but the fact is, I don’t think we need to invent much more of anything. We don’t need new tech solutions or much new investment. What we need to do for a start is stop the economic growth machine not replace it with a “green” growth machine based around new tech miracles, new innovations, new investments to bring them to market, and so on. We need to just stop growth and shut down much of our industrial economy. If we had suppressed emissions and resource consumption decades ago we wouldn’t be facing the climate emergency we face now. But we didn’t and haven’t and so now we have no choice but to slam on the brakes from here to China, substantiall deindustrialize, and figure out how to reorganize a viable sustainable society.
Richard
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