Four Scenarios for the Future (part one)
Ten years ago, David Holmgren brought out a thesis he titled ‘future scenarios,’ wherein he laid out some reasoning for two main axes along which the next few decades could be characterized and developed four main scenarios which corresponded to the four general quadrants laid out by his axes of primary variables.
His two major variables were the rate and severity of climate change, and the rate of oil/energy/resource depletion. See his paper here, https://www.futurescenarios.org/ where he laid down the following scenarios:
Slow/benign climate change, slow resource depletion: ‘green tech.’ A scenario in which conditions remain stable enough and resources abundant enough to develop an organized and controlled descent to lower resource consumption and ultimately lower complexity, without falling into chaos. This is the solar power, windfarms, electric cars and tech future type of story that is being pushed hard by the propaganda machine of the ‘establishment’ during the past few years.
Fast/harmful climate change, slow resource depletion: ‘brown tech.’ A scenario in which the situation gets more chaotic, more rapidly, where economic imbalances and breakdowns prevent a ‘green’ transition, and where instead the focus remains on extending the service life of existing energy sources in a top-down forced reduction in consumption. This scenario is characterized by pragmatic totalitarianism, and gratuitous violence to control resources. If it is possible to consolidate power quickly, current societal structures can even hang on for some decades until they run out of the stores of high-quality energy embedded in leftover technology it can’t reproduce. Then, society breaks down into a more decentralized post-tech picture.
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