{"id":67011,"date":"2024-03-24T05:43:22","date_gmt":"2024-03-24T10:43:22","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=67011"},"modified":"2024-03-24T05:43:22","modified_gmt":"2024-03-24T10:43:22","slug":"todays-contemplation-collapse-cometh-lxxvii-its-too-late-for-managed-degrowth","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=67011","title":{"rendered":"Today\u2019s Contemplation: Collapse Cometh\u00a0LXXVII–It\u2019s Too Late For Managed Degrowth"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Today\u2019s Contemplation: Collapse Cometh\u00a0LXXVII<\/strong><\/h3>\n

November 15, 2022 (original posting date)<\/p>\n

Chitchen Itza, Mexico. (1986) Photo by\u00a0author.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

It\u2019s Too Late For Managed Degrowth<\/strong><\/p>\n

This contemplation is a \u2018short\u2019 comment I shared on an article<\/a> by Martin Tye that showed up on my Medium feed and I read this morning. It asks an important question in whether the \u2018action\u2019 being called for by various groups\/individuals to address climate issues are framed by an understanding of our fundamental predicament of ecological overshoot. He argues that with a proper framing of the issue the appropriate response is one of \u2018degrowth\u2019.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/section>\n

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Yes, the evidence is accumulating quickly that we are significantly into ecological overshoot. And, yes, degrowing our ways (and totally rejecting the growth agenda being foisted upon humanity) seems the only means of addressing the core cause (exponential growth of population and its drain on resources and overloading of sinks\u200a\u2014\u200aespecially in so-called \u2018advanced\u2019 economies).<\/p>\n

I understand the \u2018merit\u2019 of \u2018softening the tone\u2019 on the messaging of our dilemma, however, I fear that the degrowth movement, for the most part, continues to frame the predicament in too soft a way (in other words, still an awful lot of denial and bargaining by many degrowth advocates). An approach that may have been \u2018achievable\u2019 for more broad-based \u2018success\u2019 several decades ago but not nowadays given how much further we have travelled down the path of unsustainability and planetary damage we have caused. To say little about the momentum of this ever-enlarging avalanche we\u2019ve set off.<\/p>\n

It seems increasingly unlikely that we can \u2018save\u2019 everyone or everything. And while holding our sociopathic ruling caste\u2019s feet-to-the-fire is a necessary action (if for no other reason than to get the message out to a wider audience), I\u2019m leaning towards the notion that the best we can do is to attempt to make one\u2019s local community as self-sufficient and resilient as possible for the exceedingly difficult journey ahead. Given we are sure to experience an increasing breakdown of the various complexities we\u2019ve come to rely upon for our lifestyles, this approach is getting well past the critical stage of \u2018necessity for survival\u2019.<\/p>\n

Potable water. Food. Shelter needs for the climate. Ensuring these basics are at the forefront of a community\u2019s time and energy may help local peoples to get through the bottleneck we have led ourselves into.<\/p>\n

On the other hand, the rest of the planet\u2019s species may be hoping for us not be successful in this endeavour given how pre\/history suggests for the last ten or so millennia pockets of humanity keep following this same suicidal path\u2026only with the help of a one-time cache of relatively easy-to-access and readily-transportable energy we\u2019ve encompassed the entire planet in this destructive tendency.<\/p>\n

Infinite growth. Finite planet. What could possibly go wrong?<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/section>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Today\u2019s Contemplation: Collapse Cometh\u00a0LXXVII November 15, 2022 (original posting date) Chitchen Itza, Mexico. (1986) Photo by\u00a0author. It\u2019s Too Late For Managed Degrowth This contemplation is a \u2018short\u2019 comment I shared on an article by Martin Tye that showed up on my Medium feed and I read this morning. It asks an important question in whether […]<\/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":[2,3,4,5,6,7],"tags":[150,203,22093,286,391,5833,30370,33947],"class_list":["post-67011","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-economics","category-energy-2","category-environment","category-geopolitics","category-liberty","category-survival-2","tag-collapse","tag-degrowth","tag-ecological-overshoot","tag-exponential-growth","tag-growth","tag-steve-bull","tag-todays-contemplation","tag-todays-contemplation-collapse-cometh"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/67011","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=67011"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/67011\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":67012,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/67011\/revisions\/67012"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=67011"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=67011"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=67011"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}