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Overshoot: The Ecological Basis of Revolutionary Change William R. Catton (1980)
Overshoot: The Ecological Basis of Revolutionary Change
William R. Catton (1980)
Though, ‘Overshoot’, is ostensibly a book about biophysical limits, the theme that runs through it is about the human propensity for denying obvious facts: Our ability to deceive not only others, but more importantly, ourselves.
As with the first review in this four-part miniseries, ‘Farewell to Growth’ (2007), any book that posits the ‘end of affluence’ will inevitably attract the misanthrope, and their arch-enemy, the Cornucopian.
There’s a lovely exchange from one of the more comical ‘X-Files’ episodes that’s very descriptive:
“I wanna be abducted by aliens.”
“Why, whatever for?”
“…I just wanna be taken away into some place where I don’t have to worry about finding a job.”
Those who celebrate the book are as equally interesting as those who hate it: Celebrating the ‘end of society’ can be just as escapist as the cult-like belief that ‘technology will save us’; yet, as Catton describes, both misanthropy and Cornucopianism are a means of denying the demonstrable trends unfolding before our eyes.
Catton summarises the scope of the book in the Preface:
“In a future that is as unavoidable as it will be unwelcome, survival and sanity may depend upon our ability to cherish rather than to disparage the concept of human dignity… I have tried to show the real nature of humanity’s predicament not because understanding its nature will enable us to escape it, but because if we do not understand it we shall continue to act and react in ways that make it worse.”
That’s why this book has as many ‘haters’ as it does devotees: It attacks people’s ‘cult-like’ belief in the innovative power of technology; and disturbs the ‘comfortable classes’ by reminding them of the impermanence of those comforts.
…click on the above link to read the rest…
Stone Age Economics, Marshall Sahlins (1972)
Stone Age Economics, Marshall Sahlins (1972)
Beginning as a presentation in 1966, what Sahlins challenged was the historic prejudice which dismissed the rights and value of ‘undeveloped’ societies and their ‘state of nature’.
‘A Book in Five Minutes’ No.16 Podcast:
Download podcast as an MP3 or an Ogg Vorbis file.
Given the various forms of public anguish about the ‘cost of living crisis’, I thought it would be a good time to do another three-part ‘special’ focussing on the nature of how we live our lives – both today, and in the distant past – to objectively question the basis of this ‘modern’ lifestyle.
The first book is Marshall Sahlins’, ‘Stone Age Economics’ – published fifty years ago in 1972.
‘Stone Age Economics’:
First hardback edition, 1972. ISBN 9780-2020-1098-4.
First paperback edition, 1972. ISBN 9780-2020-1099-1.
Routledge revised paperback edition, 2017. ISBN 9781-1387-0261-5.
Free PDF of first edition, via Libcom.
Free text/PDF/epub of first edition, via Internet Archive.
Beginning with a presentation in 1966, ‘Notes on The Original Affluent Society’, what Sahlins challenged was the historic prejudice which dismissed the rights and value of ‘undeveloped’ societies and their ‘state of nature’ (I will not use the word, ‘primitive’, in this context as that is even more politically loaded).
The idea of ‘undeveloped’ societies lacking economic legitimacy, and therefore supremacy over their lands and resources, had been evolved by figures such as Hobbes and Locke in the Seventeenth Century; and was the basis of the justification which permitted the expropriation of land, and the enslavement of peoples, in Africa and the Americas under early European imperial expansion.
As Sahlins says:
“The familiar conception… makes assumptions peculiarly appropriate to market economies: that man’s wants are great, not to say infinite, whereas his means are limited, although improvable…
…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…
Fuel Poverty, the Cost of Living Crisis, and Climate Change: A Data Blog
Fuel Poverty, the Cost of Living Crisis, and Climate Change: A Data Blog
Finding solutions to immediate problems and our future needs requires some difficult decisions, and if not thought-out, short-term thinking might create contradictory responses.
Though often depoliticised by compartmentalising different problems, across society decisions on energy and the environment are innately tied to lifestyle and consumption. In looking at how we adapt to energy crises, or climate change, we have to focus on what relatively creates the greatest impact – nationally and globally.
There’s a big fuss at the moment about a ‘cost of living crisis’1, and with it the expanding spectre of fuel poverty2. It’s not possible to talk about either without connecting to energy and climate change. More importantly, this debate has traditionally ignored the ‘injustice’ behind the thoroughly unequal levels of consumption in Britain, and the world, and the deep connections this that has to both poverty and climate change.
Champagne, anyone?
There’s a graph I love to throw at people – called the ’Champagne Glass Graph’. It was first outlined in the United Nation’s Human Development Report3 in 1992. That work was updated in 2015 by Oxfam, as part of their ‘Extreme Carbon Inequality’4 report.
The United Nations, because it is made-up of nation states, is fixated by the ‘nation state’. But if you get rid of national boundaries, and just look at the lifestyle consumption of individuals, a clear trend emerges: Half of the carbon dioxide emissions are caused by just ten percent of the global population; and the bottom fifty percent of the global population only emit ten percent of the emissions.
‘Fuel Poverty, the Cost of Living Crisis, and Climate Change’ – A Data Blog
‘Fuel Poverty, the Cost of Living Crisis, and Climate Change’ – A Data Blog
Finding solutions to immediate problems and our future needs requires some difficult decisions, and if not thought-out, short-term thinking might create contradictory responses.
This is a film of my latest ‘data blog’: Ripping apart the statistics on energy, carbon emissions, and consumption, and finding that there’s a fundamental problem with the may politics and the media are debating both energy prices, and tackling climate change.
In this analysis, using recent research and statistics on consumption in the UK, I show how those most directly responsible for climate change are the most affluent 10% or so – both globally, but even on the most affluent nations consumption there is still dominated by the top 10% of the most affluent consumers.
While politics and the media refuse to engage with this reality – and dare I say, many environmentalists who represent a far more affluent demographic than average – then there will be no solution to climate change. For without a core of global and national equity and solidarity, where those which the biggest footprint take the largest reductions, we will not be able to create the conditions where the majority of the population can have confidence that the ‘costs’ of climate adaptation are being borne equally by all.
To view the text/download the data blog, as well as the audio podcast, go to the web page for this post:http://www.fraw.org.uk/blog/posts/019…
It would really help to promote this work if you could follow, subscribe, or like my social media presence — which can be accessed from the link above. In today’s digital analytics popularity contest, all that button-pressing means something in this messed-up world.
#ClimateCrisis #FuelPrices #poverty
‘Forgotten, but not gone’: How governments have deliberately ignored the safety of contaminated sites in England – and why climate change makes this worse
‘Forgotten, but not gone’: How governments have deliberately ignored the safety of contaminated sites in England – and why climate change makes this worse
‘The Metablog’, No.18, Podcast:
This is an over thirty-year long story about my involvement with contaminated sites, and helping communities to get action to clean them up[1]. It’s innately connected to my home town, Banbury: An average small town, on the border between the Midlands and the South East; yet in the 1980s, this place taught me about the issues of waste disposal and land contamination. Not because it was exceptional, but because these issues affect almost every community across Britain.
Page bookmarks
(use section number as a hotkey to jump to it, and ‘0’ to jump back to the bookmarks list).
- Introduction.
- ‘What’s past is prologue’.
- The farce of ‘Section 143’.
- Cameron & Osborne deregulate further.
- ‘High-tech’ modern landfills are this generation’s toxic legacy to future generations.
- The meeting I knew I would have one day.
- Conclusion: Solving this begins by valuing the future of our children, not abstract land values.
Generations of my family have lived here, from at least the early Nineteenth Century. By word of mouth I learned about local industrial sites, what they did, and where their waste was buried.
The problem with today’s highly mobile society is that such local knowledge is increasingly rare; and before the late 1970s, records of waste or pollution releases were rarely kept. Despite warnings about the issues of contaminated land since the 1960s, governments have failed to act to create a comprehensive system to track down, assess, and where necessary decontaminate these sites.
Just like other major ecological issues – such as climate change – the obstacle to change are the economic vested interests that pressure decision-makers not to act. Valuing profit over the lives of ordinary people, they prevent effective action.
‘What’s past is prologue’
…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…
‘Forgotten, but not gone’:
‘Forgotten, but not gone’:
How governments have deliberately ignored the safety of contaminated sites in England – and why climate change makes this worse
‘The Metablog’,
No.18, Podcast:
This is an over thirty-year long story about my involvement with contaminated sites, and helping communities to get action to clean them up[1]. It’s innately connected to my home town, Banbury: An average small town, on the border between the Midlands and the South East; yet in the 1980s, this place taught me about the issues of waste disposal and land contamination. Not because it was exceptional, but because these issues affect almost every community across Britain.
Generations of my family have lived here, from at least the early Nineteenth Century. By word of mouth I learned about local industrial sites, what they did, and where their waste was buried.
The problem with today’s highly mobile society is that such local knowledge is increasingly rare; and before the late 1970s, records of waste or pollution releases were rarely kept. Despite warnings about the issues of contaminated land since the 1960s, governments have failed to act to create a comprehensive system to track down, assess, and where necessary decontaminate these sites.
Just like other major ecological issues – such as climate change – the obstacle to change are the economic vested interests that pressure decision-makers not to act. Valuing profit over the lives of ordinary people, they prevent effective action.
‘What’s past is prologue’
Climate change is important, but it has pushed other pressing ecological issues off the agenda. Like climate change, land contamination is a direct result of historic industrialisation. It is done. Now we have to manage those impacts. Unfortunately, climate change will make those impacts far worse.
…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…
‘Post-Scarcity Anarchism’
‘Post-Scarcity Anarchism’
Murray Bookchin,
first published 1971
‘A Book in Five Minutes’, Podcast no.5:
Download this recording as:
An MP3 file; or an Ogg Vorbis file
Topped by a statue of Ceres, the Roman goddess of agriculture, what remains of Banbury’s Corn Exchange stands as a reminder of the power of Britain’s landed elite; who made money by rationing the supply of grain under the Corn Laws.
‘Post-Scarcity Anarchism’, AK Press, 2004 Edition. ISBN 9781904859062.
‘Post-Scarcity Anarchism’, The Anarchist Library, 1986 Edition.
Today, the site of the Corn Exchange is a shopping centre. Inside the shops also seek to extract cash by rationing; except today that isn’t the physical rationing of essential goods. It is based on the marketing of goods psychologically-rendered in short supply by fast fashion, planned obsolescence, and brand identification.
Someone who foresaw this change, and its implication for radical movements, was Murray Bookchin. Bookchin foresaw how consumerism was changing the dialogue in society towards a politics of ‘post-scarcity’.
‘Post-Scarcity Anarchism’ is an anthology of Bookchin’s essays. This print version was produced in 2004 by AK Press; but like all the best anarchist publishers, it’s available for free on-line.
Why then have a paper copy? What if The Internet stopped working; or deliberately blocked Bookchin’s works as ‘subversive’? That contradiction – a monetarily ‘free’ Internet, that is not ‘free’ politically or socially due to its technological nature – represents the heights of what Bookchin talked about:
“A century ago, scarcity had to be endured; today, it has to be enforced – hence the importance of the state in the present era… the social dialectic and the contradictions of capitalism have expanded from the economic to the hierarchical realms of society… from the arena of survival to the arena of life…
…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…
The Autumn Raspberry Harvest
The Autumn Raspberry Harvest
Preserving food is not just ‘cooking’; preserving food requires that you think about the future. Hence why growing and preserving food can be a window into planning a new future.
‘An Anarchist’s Cookbook’,
Part 4 Podcast:
Download this recording as:
An MP3 file; or an Ogg Vorbis file
Page bookmarks
(use section number as a hotkey to jump to it, and ‘0’ to jump back to the bookmarks list).
Consumerism isolates & disconnects: The media hypes the desire for this lifestyle, while we struggle to obtain the cash to buy it; and in this process its hyper-individualism turns our focus inwards, isolating us from other people and the natural world.
From climate change to resource depletion, the systems which underpin that lifestyle are failing (though if you are in the ‘precariat’, arguably that happened twenty years ago). Finding a solution to the trap of affluence, or of state-dependent poverty, requires the same practical response:
Opening-up to new habitual methods for living.
“It’s a connection thing…”
This post started out as a simple idea: To document how I tend, pick, store, and use the raspberries that grow in the garden. It’s a thing I do as part of daily life. It’s not a chore that needs doing; it’s a release from the ‘dead’ energy of consumerism, to engage instead with the positive, natural, life-giving energies of own-made food.
OK then, it’s not that simple! Thing is, preserving food is not cooking! It requires that you think about your future. This is about raspberries, but it could equally be about seed sprouting, growing lettuce in boxes, or foraging (which is what the next post will cover).
‘The Limits to Growth’ (1972)
‘The Limits to Growth’ (1972)
Published in 1972, and shrouded in controversy since that date, ‘The Limits to Growth’ is the most successful econometric projection ever made.
The idea of these of blog posts is to introduce people to some ‘historic’ books and reports, which I think should be more widely read. To start, I thought I’d pick a book that for years has been vilified or deliberately ignored. Any discussion of its content is shrouded in controversy. It’s the 1972 book, ‘The Limits to Growth’.
My version is a second revised edition from 1974. Its 200 pages are a little more beaten-up than when I bought it second hand, as I refer to it quite a bit in debates.
Paul Ehrlich’s, ‘The Population Bomb’, had launched a debate about humans and the environment. Problem was, that book is based on pretty poor data. To resolve that lack of evidence, a group of scientists decided to create a properly researched model to look at humanity’s effect on their finite environment.
At this time ‘systems science’, computer models, and computer-based projection, were a very new thing – relatively little understood by politicians and the public. This new application of mathematics had arisen out of Cold War strategic planning. Applying it to global ecological issues was, though, a revolutionary idea.
The group outlined its work on page 27:
The model we have constructed is, like every other model, imperfect, oversimplified, and unfinished. We are well aware of its shortcomings, but we believe that it is the most useful model now available for dealing with problems…
…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…
