{"id":58176,"date":"2021-06-07T10:53:10","date_gmt":"2021-06-07T15:53:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=58176"},"modified":"2021-06-07T10:53:10","modified_gmt":"2021-06-07T15:53:10","slug":"todays-contemplation-collapse-cometh-xix","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=58176","title":{"rendered":"Today’s Contemplation: Collapse Cometh XIX"},"content":{"rendered":"

Today’s Contemplation: Collapse Cometh XIX<\/a><\/h3>\n
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Tulum, Mexico (1986) Photo by author<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Andrew Nikiforuk<\/a>\u00a0is an author and contributing editor of the online media site\u00a0The Tyee<\/a>. He has been writing about the oil and gas industry for close to 20 years. In his most recent\u00a0article<\/a>\u00a0he writes about the lies being told by the Canadian government regarding its attempts to reduce carbon emissions. The Canadian government is certainly not alone in its misinformation (propaganda?) and one of the issues I believe is contributing to the lies is a (purposeful?) misidentification of our planet\u2019s fundamental existential dilemma. Below is my comment on Andrew\u2019s excellent discussion.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/section>\n

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Thank\u00a0y<\/span>ou, Andrew. You\u2019ve laid out the case for some very, very difficult decisions\/choices\/discussions that lay ahead of us.<\/p>\n

I\u2019m not convinced we will make what I consider to be the correct choices or even engage in some meaningful and productive dialogue since the changes that I believe are needed (degrowth) would be viewed as exceedingly painful to many as it challenges not only some core beliefs but what could be considered rights\/entitlements\/expectations regarding living standards (and it doesn\u2019t help that we are genetically predisposed to avoid pain and seek pleasure). The brakes that need to be applied to some social practices\/policies (perhaps most? all?) would also be challenged by some because I would contend the fundamental dilemma we are having to address is not necessarily carbon emissions, which I would argue is one of the consequences of the underlying issue, which is ecological overshoot.<\/p>\n

The finite, one-time cache of easy-to-retrieve and cheap-to-access energy provided by fossil fuels has \u2018fuelled\u2019 an explosion in human numbers and sociopolitical\/cultural\/economic complexities unlike any other time in human pre\/history. With this energy resource at our disposal we have constructed a complex, global, and industrialised world with technological wonders that would certainly appear magical to past generations.<\/p>\n

\u2026click on the above link to read the rest of the article\u2026<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/section>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Today’s Contemplation: Collapse Cometh XIX Tulum, Mexico (1986) Photo by author Andrew Nikiforuk\u00a0is an author and contributing editor of the online media site\u00a0The Tyee. He has been writing about the oil and gas industry for close to 20 years. In his most recent\u00a0article\u00a0he writes about the lies being told by the Canadian government regarding its […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[3,4,7,1],"tags":[5549,14273,1729,3197,5833,30370],"class_list":["post-58176","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-energy-2","category-environment","category-survival-2","category-uncategorized","tag-andrew-nikiforuk","tag-medium","tag-oil-and-gas-industry","tag-overshoot","tag-steve-bull","tag-todays-contemplation"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/58176","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=58176"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/58176\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":58178,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/58176\/revisions\/58178"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=58176"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=58176"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=58176"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}