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Photo Source Sakeeb Sabakka | CC BY 2.0

…We can’t save the world by playing by the rules because the rules have to change. Everything needs to change and it has to start today….To all the politicians that pretend to take the climate question seriously, to all of you who know but choose to look the other way every day because you seem more frightened of the changes that can prevent the catastrophic climate change than the catastrophic climate change itself… Please treat the crisis as the crisis it is and give us a future.

— Greta Thunberg, 15 year-old climate activist speaking at the Helsinki climate demonstration, October 20, 2018

When I entered my interdisciplinary environmental graduate program, I already had years of work experience behind me as well as a lifetime of informal environmental education. I recognized the grim ecological picture. Some of my professors, however, were quick to admonish, “We can’t be gloom and doom.” Their other refrain was, “We can’t go back.” They offered no evidence for those two prescriptions with regard to the climate and ecological crises, yet their commands were common among environmental scholars. More than a decade later, we face far more dismal prospects for the future of humanity, but we are still loath to truly address them.

Doom and Gloom

In 1972, the Club of Rome, a consortium of scientists, economists, politicians, diplomats, and industrialists, produced a lengthy scientific report entitled Limits to Growth. Their work predicted a collapse of the human population due to our unchecked economic growth and resource depletion. While their estimates were condemned as alarmist and overreaching, independent researchers have updated the report for the 50^thanniversary of the club’s inception, and have largely found that the conclusions from the original still hold.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

The Fall of Empires Explained in 10 Minutes

October 21, 2018

The Fall of Empires Explained in 10 Minutes

This is the presentation I gave to the meeting for the 50th anniversary of the Club of Rome on Oct 18th in Rome. The gist of the idea is that the fall of ancient civilizations, such as the Roman Empire, can be described with the same models developed in the 1970 to describe the future of our civilization. States, empires, and entire civilizations tend to fall under the combined effect of resource depletion and growing pollution. In the end, they are destroyed by what I call the Seneca Effect.

You can find the paper I mention in the talk at this link.

Climate change, water and the infrastructure problem

September 2, 2018

Climate change, water and the infrastructure problem

I was watching an episode of the science-fiction noir thriller “The Expanse” recently. Set hundreds of years in the future, the United Nations has now become the world government and its main rival is Mars, a former Earth colony. The UN is still in New York City and a new fancier UN building is now tucked safely behind a vast seawall that protects the city from rising water resulting from climate change.

It’s a world that looks like an extension of our own, but one that has survived the twin existential threats of climate change and resource depletion. But will it be so easy to update our infrastructure to overcome these threats?

The naive notion that we can, for example, “just use more air conditioning” as the globe warms betrays a perplexing misunderstanding of what we face. Even if one ignores the insanity of burning more climate-warming fossil fuels to make electricity for more air-conditioning, there is the embedded assumption that our current infrastructure with only minor modifications will withstand the pressures placed upon it in a future transformed by climate change and other depredations.

That assumption doesn’t square with the facts. Take, for instance, the Miami, Florida water system. One would think that Miami’s first task in adapting to climate change would be to defend its shores against sea-level rise. But it turns out that the most troublesome effect of sea-level rise is sea water infiltration into the aquifer which supplies the city’s water.

Once that happens the city would have to adopt desalination for its water supply, a process that currently costs two and one-half times more than current water purification processes. And, of course, desalinating water for a city as large as Miami, a city of more than 400,000 who consume 330 million gallons per day, would require a huge, expensive new infrastructure.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Systems Thinking, Critical Thinking, and Personal Resilience

May 24, 2018

Systems Thinking, Critical Thinking, and Personal Resilience

As a writer focused on the global sustainability crisis, I’m often asked how to deal with the stress of knowing—knowing, that is, that we humans have severely overshot Earth’s long-term carrying capacity, making a collapse of both civilization and Earth’s ecological systems likely; knowing that we are depleting Earth’s resources (including fossil fuels and minerals) and clogging its waste sinks (like the atmosphere’s and oceans’ ability to absorb CO2); knowing that the decades of rapid economic growth that characterized the late 20^th and early 21^st centuries are ending, and that further massive interventions by central banks and governments can’t do more than buy us a little bit more time of relative stability; knowing that technology (even renewable energy technology) won’t save our fundamentally unsustainable way of life.

In the years I’ve spent investigating these predicaments, I’ve been fortunate to meet experts who have delved deeply into specific issues—the biodiversity crisis, the population crisis, the climate crisis, the resource depletion crisis, the debt crisis, the plastic waste crisis, and on and on. In my admittedly partial judgment, some of the smartest people I’ve met happen also to be among the more pessimistic. (One apparently smart expert I haven’t had opportunity to meet yet is 86-year-old social scientist Mayer Hillman, the subject of this recent article in The Guardian.)

In discussing climate change and all our other eco-social predicaments, how does one distinguish accurate information from statements intended to elicit either false hope or needless capitulation to immediate and utter doom? And, in cases where pessimistic outlooks do seem securely rooted in evidence, how does one psychologically come to terms with the information?

Systems Thinking

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Time To Choose

May 12, 2018

kienyke.com

Time To Choose

Will you be an agent of depletion or regeneration?

There’s a vast revolution underway. And it’s time to pick sides.

Your choice couldn’t be more critically important. Quite possibly, the entire fate of the human species hangs in the balance.

It’s time to decide: Will you be an agent of depletion or regeneration?

Bad Choices = Bad Outcomes

For many centuries, humans have consumed the natural resources around them at a rate far faster than the planet can replenish. Until recently this didn’t pose an existential problem, as fresh deposits could be tapped through the discovery of new continents or development of new technologies.

But those days of living beyond our means are now over. No sizeable unexplored territories remain on the globe. Technology is only helping us burn faster through the increasingly dilute deposits that are left. The planet’s population and its demand on key resources is ballooning, causing the natural systems we depend on for life to falter.

Yes, the situation is dire. But it doesn’t have to be this way.

A better future is possible. It’s up to us to make it happen.

There’s plenty of evidence of working real-world models that show exactly how we can improve the planet for future generations. I’ll focus on a few in a moment.

But first, it’s critical to understand that working against adoption of these better practices is our society’s entrenched system of extraction, otherwise known as the Business As Usual (BAU) crowd. This includes every person and entity busy protecting or promoting (usually from a position of profound ignorance) the concept of exponential economic growth as a necessary and good thing.

Complicit are all major parties of our political systems, the mainstream media (MSM), and of course the entire financial system — especially all the world’s central banks and their main clients.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

If you can’t see it, it can kill you. Propaganda, for instance.

April 18, 2018

If you can’t see it, it can kill you. Propaganda, for instance.

If you never took this test before, spend two minutes on it before reading the text below.

The “selective attention” test you see above was developed in 1999 by Christopher Chablis and Daniel Simons. It shows how people have difficulties in perceiving the most obvious things when they are focused on something that engages their attention. Often, it has been seen as just a sort of psychological parlor game, but it has a deep significance.

This selective attention phenomenon may well describe the current world’s situation. Our aging leaders seem to be so fixated on their manhood – and unsure about it – that they try to reassure themselves by firing missiles around. And, in doing that, they neglect everything else. But it is not just a question of aging leaders, the whole Western world shows evident signs of senility at the societal level. Most of us in our daily life are fixated on details of no relevance and miss the important issues that threaten our very existence.

So, we are missing the gorilla which is climate change, as well as other gorillas which go under different names: ecosystem collapse, resource depletion, overpopulation, widespread pollution, and more. Some of these gorillas are recognized and described by the scientific community, but the public and the leaders alike fail to hear the advice they receive.

Even more worrisome is the possibility that there exist gorillas which not even scientists can detect. As an example, we are daily being exposed to a cocktail or toxic metals resulting from industrial activity. We know that each single metal, alone, doesn’t (normally) reach concentrations in our bodies so high to be deemed as dangerous. But we don’t really know what happens when people have several low concentration metals inside their body – which is the case for most of us.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Tim Jackson: The High Price Of Growth

October 16, 2017

Tim Jackson: The High Price Of Growth

A finite planet cannot sustain infinite economic growth

Modern society is addicted to and engineered for perpetual economic growth.

Now, a fourth-grader can tell you that nothing can grow forever, especially if you have finite resources. But that simple realization is eluding today’s central planners, despite multiplying evidence that growth is becoming harder and harder to come by.

This week’s podcast guest is Professor Tim Jackson, sustainability advisor for the UK government, professor of sustainable development at the University of Surrey and Director of CUSP. Tim is also a full member of the Club of Rome.

He explains why the exponential growth rates of today’s economies, and their associated rates of resource extraction/consumption, will not be able to continue for much longer — and why a pursuit of “prosperity” (defined much more broadly than simple consumerism) is a much healthier goal for humanity.

Anyone who thinks that exponential growth can go on forever on a finite planet is either a madman or an economist.

Those very steep lines that rise very sharply as we approach the 21^st century and show us that we are exceeding our carrying capacity in all sorts of ways are quite compelling. I think people actually feel this to some extent, that having more and more ‘stuff’ going through the system is somehow unsustainable. And not just in environmental ways, but even in social ways.

It’s the classic challenge of the irresistible force meeting the unmovable object. This pervasive idea of prosperity consisting of exponential growth, while the planet is not getting any bigger, is putting ecosystems under lots of stress. The pressures that human society puts on our environment is increasingly obvious.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Riyadh Feels the Pinch: The True Cost of Saudi Subsidies

November 21, 2015

Riyadh Feels the Pinch: The True Cost of Saudi Subsidies

In downtown Riyadh, SUV-populated intersections and lushly landscaped parks leave little indication that Saudi Arabia is rapidly depleting its oil and water resources. The Saudi predilection for gas-guzzling vehicles and water-intensive leisure spaces is hardly surprising- governmental subsidies have long obscured the true cost of these resources.

Saudis pay about 60 cents a gallon at the pump, which makes the average cost to fill a tank less than $20. Electricity, powered primarily by oil, costs only USD 0.6 per kilowatt hour. Drinking water supplied to Saudi households is so cheap that it is practically free. These low commodity rates are viewed by many as traditional perks of Saudi birthright, and Riyadh has traditionally shied away from raising tariffs and risking public ire. Placating the masses through subsidies and handouts, after all, has been a successful strategy for maintaining the House of Saud’s enduring grip on power in a region plagued by uprisings and political volatility. Saudi Oil Minister Ali al-Naimi recently reaffirmed that there is no “dire need” for the Kingdom to cut energy subsidies in response to rumors that Riyadh was discussing adjustments to the subsidy program.

Yet a system of high subsidies is ultimately unsustainable for the Kingdom. Most obviously, the costly system is contributing to a rapid depletion of governmental coffers. With oil prices still slumping, Saudi Arabia faces skyrocketing debt and depleted monetary reserves. Equally important – high subsidies distort the true cost of resources, encourage overconsumption, and foster a public misperception that energy and water supplies are inexhaustible.

Depleting Monetary Resources

The Kingdom’s energy subsidy program runs up an annual bill of over $107 billion, or 13.2% of the country’s total GDP. This year has seen plenty of additional discretionary spending by Riyadh as well. When King Salman ascended the throne in January, Riyadh doled out $32 billion in handouts as a gesture of goodwill.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

The Left should embrace degrowth

November 11, 2015

The Left should embrace degrowth

Only if we stop the cycle of endless growth will our planet prosper, argue Degrowthers. Jenny Downing under a Creative Commons Licence

Degrowth is a frontal attack on the ideology of economic growth. Some call it a critique: a slogan or a ‘missile word’. Others talk of the ‘theory of’ – or the ‘literature on’ – degrowth; or of degrowth policies’. Many see themselves as the ‘degrowth movement’ or claim they live ‘the degrowth way’. What is degrowth and where did it come from?

Origins

Intellectually, the origins of degrowth are found in the Continental écologie politique of the 1970s. Andre Gorz spoke of ‘décroissance’ in 1972, questioning the compatibility of capitalism with earth’s balance ‘for which … degrowth of material production is a necessary condition’. Unless we consider ‘equality without growth’, Gorz argued, we reduce socialism to nothing but ‘the continuation of capitalism by other means – an extension of middle-class values, lifestyles and social patterns’.

‘Demain la décroissance’ (‘tomorrow, degrowth’) was the title of a 1979 translated collection of essays of Nicholas Georgescu-Roegen, a Romanian émigré teaching in the US and a proto ecological economist who argued that economic growth accelerates entropy. These were the times of the oil crisis and the Club of Rome. For continental ‘red-green’ thinkers, however, the question of limits to growth was first and foremost a political one. Unlike Malthusian concerns with resource depletion, overpopulation and collapse of the system, theirs was a desire for pulling the emergency brake on the train of capitalism, or, to quote Ursula Le Guin, ‘put a pig in the tracks of a one-way future consisting only of growth’.

The slogan ‘décroissance’ was revived in the early 2000s by activists in the city of Lyon in direct actions against mega-infrastructures and advertising. Serge Latouche, a professor of economic anthropology and vocal critic of development programmes in Africa, popularized it with his books, calling for an ‘End to sustainable development’ and ‘a long life to convivial degrowth’.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

John Michael Greer: The God Of Technological Progress May Well Be Dead

April 13, 2015

John Michael Greer: The God Of Technological Progress May Well Be Dead

But society is unwilling to consider that

As we often state here at Peak Prosperity, the narratives we hold are immensely important. The stories running our heads influence everything from our beliefs to our values to our actions.

Which is why it’s so dangerous when a society clings onto a narrative that is no longer serving it well, a narrative divorced from reality.

This week, Chris and John Michael Greer address the global faith in inexorable technological advancement as a cure-all to every predicament we face. In many ways, it’s become the dominant religion of the 21st century. Sadly, there are a growing number of threats for which ‘improved’ technologies actually exacerbate the risks (particularly in regards to depleting critical resources) — but society refuses to acknowledge this, as it runs counter to the tech-as-savoir meme so many are pining their hopes on:

The problem comes when people have invested in a set of beliefs that work for a while, and then they stop working. That is the situation we are in now. From basically the beginning of the Industrial Revolution to the 1970s or maybe a little later, the narrative of progress worked. During all that time, there was a steady increase in the availability of energy per capita. By White’s Law, which is one of the basic principles of human ecology, economic development is function of energy per capita. As the energy curve rose and as we broke into one after another of the planet’s cookie jars and stole the fossil carbon there, progress actually did happen.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

The central contradiction in the modern outlook: ‘Planet of the Apes’ vs ‘2001: A Space Odyssey’

January 12, 2015

The central contradiction in the modern outlook: ‘Planet of the Apes’ vs ‘2001: A Space Odyssey’

When talking about the perils of climate change or resource depletion, soil degradation or fisheries collapse, water pollution or nuclear waste–how annoying it is to have one listener respond dismissively, “They’ll figure something out. They always have.”

It’s a nonsense rejoinder and yet, it often gains the assent of many–as if this assertion were a self-evident truth that only an enemy of progress would question. And, that’s where we’ll start examining the central contradiction in the modern outlook–with a statement that is offered as if it were a scientific fact, when, in truth, it is nothing more than a piece of dogma enunciated by the religion we call modernism.

At first glance, the statement seems backward-looking because it asserts that we humans have always averted catastrophe through our ingenuity. But, of course, this is complete hogwash. History is replete with civilizations that have risen and then fallen, crumbling for myriad reasons eerily similar to ones said to threaten our own: climate change, resource depletion, soil degradation, water pollution, plagues, war, and political disintegration. The listener’s statement above can’t really be backward-looking for it would fall to pieces with only a cursory review of history.

And so, this means that it must actually be forward-looking. It assumes that the future cannot fail even though the past testifies to almost certain decline for our civilization at some point. What is the basis for this forward-looking optimism concerning a future which we cannot know?

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

The Environment: Depleting Resources – Crash Course Chapter 23 | Peak Prosperity

December 2, 2014

The Environment: Depleting Resources – Crash Course Chapter 23 | Peak Prosperity.

Chapter 23 of the Crash Course is now publicly available and ready for watching below.

When we wander over to the third E in this story – the Environment – we note two things: both the increasing demand of exponentially more resources being extracted from the ground and exponentially more waste being put back into various ecosystems.

Because we are trying to assess here whether we can justify ever-increasing amounts of money and debt, for now let’s just concern ourselves with the resources we take from the natural world to support our global economy.

Oil is not the only essential resource that is fast becoming more expensive to produce, harder to find, or both. In fact, we see an alarming number of examples depletion of critical resources that almost exactly mirror the oil story.

First we went after the easy and or high quality stuff, then the progressively trickier, deeper and or more dilute stuff.

The bottom line is this: we, as a species, all over the globe, have already mined the richest ores, found the easiest energy sources, and farmed the richest soils that our Environment has to offer.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article and view the video…

Buying Less Stuff Can Actually Make You More Happy | Carl Duivenvoorden

November 27, 2014

Buying Less Stuff Can Actually Make You More Happy | Carl Duivenvoorden.

Tax time is never pretty, and for me last year was uglier than usual. By the measures of economics and Revenue Canada, I didn’t have a great 2013. But by the measures of sustainability and fulfillment, I had an awesome 2013. How could that be?

Coincidentally, a book I read recently has helped me make sense of that paradox. It’s called Your Money or Your Life, and it explains how you don’t need as much money as you might think to live a fulfilling, sustainable and financially secure life. That’s especially relevant on the threshold of Black Friday and the coming Christmas shopping frenzy. Here’s an overview.

Financial treadmill

If you work at a conventional job, do you know what price you are getting for your time? Time is the only asset any of us truly have; the authors refer to it as our ‘life energy’.

The answer isn’t as simple as you’d think. If you earn $1,000 for a 40 hour week, the quick answer is $25. But if you spend two hours a day getting ready for work, commuting and unwinding when you get home, your work week is really 50 hours.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

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