Thanks to Sam Hopkins for bringing my attention to the work of Chris Clugston.
I’m pretty well read in the overshoot space and I thought I knew all the important contributors. Somehow I missed Chris Clugston.
Clugston has written two books: Scarcity in 2012, and Blip in 2019.
His unique contribution is to research our consumption of depleting non-renewable resources. All 100+ of them, not just fossil energy.
For many people, fossil energy depletion is a fuzzy threat because it’s complicated and there are so many cheerleaders of false beliefs. Ditto for the climate change threat with its promoters of green growth and carbon capture machines.
Clugston presents so many tangible non-negotiable threats to modern civilization that after absorbing his work there is no room for doubt and no where to hide.
His conclusion is bleak. Clugston calculates modern civilization will be done by 2050, with or without climate change, with or without peak oil, and with or without any green new deal idea.
Harsh yes, but real, and honest, and helpful for those still trying to make the future less bad, because his work shows that the best path is democratically supported rapid population reduction policies.
Clugston’s visibility on the internet is low. I don’t know it that’s by choice, or because of the unpleasantness of his message. I’d like to see that fixed so the people working to make the future less bad can use his work as ammunition.
What we do to enable our existence simultaneously undermines our existence…
Our enormous and ever-increasing utilization of NNRs (nonrenewable natural resources) – the finite and non-replenishing fossil fuels, metals, and nonmetallic minerals that enable our industrial existence – is causing:
– Increasingly pervasive global NNR scarcity, which is causing
– Faltering global human prosperity, which is causing
– Increasing global political instability, economic fragility, and societal unrest.
…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…
