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Predicting Financial Collapse (and what to do about it)

June 9, 2024

Predicting Financial Collapse (and what to do about it)

Many people ask me about how to insulate themselves from a financial collapse of some kind or another. I am not a financial advisor, and my focus has always been on collaborative resilience, whereby collectives of people might cope better. But when pressed by friends on what they could do to protect themselves a bit, what I typically recommend is to lessen one’s dependence on goods and services traded within a corporate market place, participate more in an economy of locally-produced goods, try to own some of the basic necessities like a bicycle, and if having some savings then put some of that into crypto (like Ethereum, which does not require massive amounts of energy), gold or silver (in physical possession), or other items that are likely to maintain their value and utility over time. I also recommend not postponing things like elective surgery or house repairs. Further than that, I suggest people no longer assume that their financial savings will give them spending power in the future and instead that they look to nurture other kinds of ongoing productivity with that money. In my own life, these considerations combined with my wish to promote collaborative resilience, so that I funded the launch of an organic farm and farm school in a country where I could afford to do that without debt. But financial resilience is not my field. Therefore, I asked my colleague Matthew Slater to explore this issue with me. In the following guest essay, Matthew writes as one who has been devouring financial collapse narratives since 2008 and studying the phenomenon of money, as well as building alternative means of exchange…

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

I also hate this conclusion (on net zero)

July 9, 2023

I also hate this conclusion (on net zero)

I begin the final section of my chapter on Energy Collapse with the subtitle “I also hate this conclusion”. Because I did not want to discover that modern societies cannot continue their energy trajectories by simply displacing fossil fuels with new technologies. But that is what the sum of the relevant research shows us. In addition, the pursuit of the total electrification of economies will have hugely damaging effects on the biosphere, due to the mining involved. This is the awkward reality that most Western environmentalists are ignoring. The ‘green’ capitalists are extremely happy for us to keep ignoring that reality, as then any pressure for action translates into more money and pleasure for them. But if activism is about our personal commitment to higher goals, whether using moderate or radical tactics, then it must start with a fair assessment of reality and possibility. Otherwise, how is such activism not simply a mix of self-aggrandisement and emotional distraction by keeping busy?

The book Breaking Together is now available in audio, and Chapter 3 on Energy Collapse can be heard for free on soundcloud. To convey some of the arguments, below I share the first and last sections of the chapter. The image of the Kintsugi Tesla is from the Kintsugi World art project which accompanies the book.

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I was wrong about Elon. Or to be more precise, I was wrong about Tesla, the car company—not the physicist. Back in 2007, I included Tesla Motors in a report for the environmental group WWF, as one of a handful of companies that would be shaping our future. I was particularly impressed with how the company was tackling the stigma about driving electric vehicles and using a sportscar style and luxury pricing to shift those perceptions…

…click on the above link to read the rest…

Why Pundits ‘Don’t Look Up’ from Progress

January 5, 2022

Why Pundits ‘Don’t Look Up’ from Progress

The new film about a total apocalypse of the human race is being slammed by many film reviewers. But when I chat to people who have seen it they think it brilliant. And my Facebook wall is full of friends writing versions of OMG what a film! So what might these extremely different reactions tell us?

When I read the reviews of ‘Don’t Look Up’ they seem to misunderstand the film. Even the reviews from environmentalists who slag off the other reviews miss what is seen as important about the film by me and people who are alive to the very latest climate trends.. So here are my two cents on the film and – like all important art – the lessons from the reactions it has generated.

Judging by its output since WWII, the role of Hollywood has been to produce stories that celebrate human power (mostly male), including conquest, progress, success and heroic individualism. The stereotypical ‘Hollywood Ending’ is not only good but is thanks to one special person. Even tragedies and horror films would typically include some of those themes. Compare American output to French films and those aspects of Hollywood content are quite clear. Such aspects are not accidental. They align with an ideology of modernity and progress that has dominated global cultures for… well there are many views on how deep it goes.. But at least since WWII.

With that background, a film that was released for Christmas and ends with all the main characters expressing love for each other before they are obliterated along with the entire human race is not very usual! Don’t Look Up is the first time I have seen ‘doomer humour’ in a film with the biggest stars.

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

The Future Is Not a Spectator Sport

July 13, 2021

The Future Is Not a Spectator Sport

Like all self-organized, adaptive systems, society moves in nonlinear ways. Even as our civilization unravels, a new ecological worldview is spreading globally. Will it become powerful enough to avert a cataclysm? None of us knows. Perhaps the Great Transition to an ecological civilization is already under way, but we can’t see it because we’re in the middle of it. We are all co-creating the future as part of the interconnected web of collective choices each of us makes: what to ignore, what to notice, and what to do about it

Excerpted from The Web of Meaning: Integrating Science and Traditional Wisdom to Find Our Place in the Universe (published in June in the UK, and available July 13 in the US)

The nonlinearity of history

There are many good reasons to watch the unfolding catastrophe of our civilization’s accelerating drive to the precipice and believe it’s already too late. The unremitting increase in carbon emissions, the ceaseless devastation of the living Earth, the hypocrisy and corruption of our political leaders, and our corporate-owned media’s strategy of ignoring the topics that matter most to humanity’s future—all these factors come together like a seemingly unstoppable juggernaut driving our society toward breaking point. As a result, an increasing number of people are beginning to reconcile themselves to a terminal diagnosis for civilization. In the assessment of sustainability leader Jem Bendell, founder of the growing Deep Adaptation movement, we should wake up to the reality that “we face inevitable near-term societal collapse.”

Our civilization certainly appears to be undergoing profound transition. But it remains uncertain what that transition will look like, and even more obscure what new societal paradigm will re-emerge once the smoke clears. A cataclysmic collapse leaving the few survivors in a grim dark age?…

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

Jem Bendell on Deep Adaptation to climate chaos

July 10, 2021

Jem Bendell on Deep Adaptation to climate chaos

Interview with Professor Jem Bendell on Deep Adaptation to climate chaos, by Facing Future TV.

In 2018, a climate paper by Jem Bendell went viral, being downloaded over a million times. It helped to launch a worldwide movement of people seeking to reduce harm in the face of societal disruption and collapse. In this interview for Facing Future TV, Jem explains the concept of Deep Adaptation, how he developed the idea, what it means in practice, what he says to critics, and what his new book on the topic is about.

FF: Who are you and how would you describe yourself?

I am a middle-aged British man who has been an environment and development scholar, activist and consultant for over a quarter of a century. I’ve lived much of my life outside the UK, worked around the world, with a lot of the time in the Global South. In that time I’ve been driven by the idea that getting smarter about the problems we face will help to reduce them. And I still suffer from that story. Hence all the writing and teaching, and the new book.

FF: What is Deep Adaptation?

Deep Adaptation has become an umbrella term for an ethos, a framework, a community and a movement.

The ethos is essentially a commitment to working together to do what’s helpful during the disruption and collapse of societies because of the direct and indirect impacts of environmental breakdown including climate change. It’s an ethos of being engaged, open-hearted and open-minded about how to be and how to respond.

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

The Sky Is Falling – Yes – No

July 18, 2020

The Sky Is Falling – Yes – No

Image Source: Joseph Pennell – Public Domain

The sky is falling is one of the more disturbing thoughts in society today, as to whether climate change is on a fast track collision course with doomsday amidst a collapsing society.

In that regard, according to the details of a scathing review by ScientistsWarning.org (“SW”) of Jem Bendell’s wildly popular “Deep Adaptation” the answer is no, not yet. Society is not ready to keel over, as postulated in Bendell’s paper.

Whew! Climate change handwringers, sleepless nights, can take a deep breath, exhale and relax based upon the critique of Bendell’s very popular paper, which crystal balls the “end to society” within only decades, or less, depending.

In strong terms, ScientistsWarning.org’s thought-provoking rebuttal expresses outrage over Professor Jem Bendell’s doomsday thesis in its article entitled “The Faulty Science, Doomism, and Flawed Conclusion of Deep Adaptation” d/d July 14, 2020 by Thomas Nicholas, Galen Hall, and Colleen Schmidt, fact-checked by scientists.

The full article can be accessed at www.ScientistsWarning.org.

Accordingly, within the opening two paragraphs of SW’s rebuttal: “In the past few years we have seen a troubling trend: a few figures in the climate movement using science — or what looks like science — to justify increasingly dire and prophetic, but ultimately unsupported claims about the future.”

Bendell’s Deep Adaptation became an overnight cult classic amongst many on the front lines of environmental justice, a brooding downcast thesis of the inevitability of “social collapse” because of the ravages of climate change/global warming, meaning there is no way out, humanity’s trapped in an insidious fireball of doom that’ll hit hard.

SW takes issue with Bendell: “(1) cherry-picking data (2) citing false reports (3) forwarding logical fallacies (4) disregard of robust scientific consensus.”

In SW’s words: “Neither social science nor the best available climate science support Deep Adaptation’s core premise: that near-term societal collapse due to climate change is inevitable.”

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

Gathering in groups as society falls apart – by Vicki Robin

November 14, 2019

Gathering in groups as society falls apart – by Vicki Robin

“Everyone wants community. Unfortunately, it involves other people.” I used that line in lectures on frugal living when talking of the loneliness of consumerism and the benefits of sharing resources. We idealize the good old days of people helping people out. But can we live them, given who we have become?

Individualism is one of the many privileges of ‘the privileged’ in Western society. We have options and choices about where we live, with whom, of what genders, ages or races, whether we are child-free or have a brood, what we eat, what we believe, jobs we’ll accept, and on and on and on. As people look at civilizational breakdown in detail, though, they realize that to survive, other people might not be optional – joining a group, a farm, a small town might be necessary.

Survival is not a solo sport. If it happens, it will happen in community – intentional, multi-generational family, accidental – where we can share the work, grow food, trade, defend ourselves, socialize, learn, teach, repair. Civilization, it turns out, has a lot of services built in that will need to be maintained as long as possible or created anew… or done without.

How do we, who are so accustomed to individualism, enter into a new reality of living in concert with others? Not as a condiment but as a necessity. Not through idealistic eyes but as a sober process of surrendering attachment to the ego’s demands and entering a state of belonging to a people and a place.

I’ve lived in several communities and learned many lessons, surprising ones and hard ones. Here are some ideas for those of you contemplating moving to an existing rural community or forming your own, given your perspective of deep adaptation.

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

Olduvai IV: Courage
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Olduvai II: Exodus
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