Regular readers of this blog
know that I believe we're headed for ecological catastrophe, driven by
the double whammy of overpopulation and accelerating resource
consumption (depicted on the charts above, with the red and green lines
marking maximum and ideal sustainable levels respectively), and they
know that my 'Roadmap'
for heading off this catastrophe is a set of 27 actions (technological,
social, political and economic), with a more radical backup 'Plan B' if it turns out we're unable or unwilling to follow the Roadmap.
Many others seem to share my alarm about our current situation, but
there is no clear consensus on what we should do about it. Over the
past year I've described at least eight prescriptions for 'saving the
world':
- Each do what we do best to 'Be the Change' (e.g. Ghandi)
- Strive for a new collective consciousness (e.g. Jon Schell)
- Apply our vast human imagination (e.g. Bucky Fuller)
- Take aggressive, coordinated action (e.g. my 'Roadmap')
- Lead the way away and others will instinctively follow (e.g. Daniel Quinn)
- Revolution: Overthrow the system (e.g. Marxists, Anarchists)
- Radical intervention: Coercion and sabotage (e.g. my 'Plan B')
- Prepare for inevitable apocalypse (e.g. neoprimitivists, religious salvationists, eco-fatalists)
This past weekend I've been reading about yet another approach, in the work of Elisabet Sahtouris (EarthDance) and Gary Alexander (eGaia),
both of whom use the caterpillar-to-butterfly radical transformation
metaphor, to call for what I'd describe as a human 'Cultural
Metamorphosis'. I'd like to thank Don Dwiggins for bringing this thinking to my attention.
In EarthDance, Elisabet lays
out an 11-part prescription to bring about this 'metamorphosis' (the
numbers in brackets are cross-references to the equivalent elements in
my 27-point Roadmap):
- Change how we measure human success from GDP to a measure of well-being
- Educate everyone to be aware of the unsustainability of our culture, and what must be changed and why (S1)
- Introduce alternative currencies to change human economic behaviour and more equitably distribute wealth
- Reduce human fertility by reducing economic and health disparities so large families are no longer necessary (S4, P8)
- Encourage voluntary simplicity to reduce resource consumption (S5)
- Require all human products to be 100% consumable or recyclable with no pollution or other waste (P1)
- Introduce sustainable agriculture -- no ploughing, no
tilling, no fertilizing, pesticides or herbicides -- based on Peru's
Waru-Waru or Mexico's Aztec Chinampa model, and end agricultural
subsidies (P3)
- Encourage bioregionalism and local self-sufficiency in production of essential goods (T1)
- Migrate from the oil economy to a renewable energy economy (T2)
- Use the Internet more aggressively and democratically to
enable self-organization ('autopoiesis') of communities, devolve power,
share information and facilitate collaboration (T4, T5, S7)
- Teach everyone Gaia philosophy -- that we are an integral part of a living, self-balancing Earth organism, and what that entails
Gary's eGaia is consistent
with Elisabet's prescription. After outlining his case for change, he
introduces a series of principles based on the achievement of peace,
cooperation and sustainability (replacing war, competition and growth,
the fuels of our current culture). He then presents a future state
vision, much as my upcoming novel will do, with vignettes from
individuals' lives in a balanced and harmonious future world (though
his future world is much less radically transformed than the one my
novel depicts). A highlight of his book is his description of Italy's Federation of Damanhur,
a fascinating and pragmatic 800-person community built on
self-sufficiency and cooperation that exists right now. It's a little
too spiritually-based for my tastes, but it demonstrates that modern,
self-organized, self-managed communities can work for long periods very
effectively and very successfully.
This reading has modified my thinking somewhat on the Roadmap, and I
will be making some changes to the Roadmap as a result. But the more I
read about our current situation, the more pessimistic and radical I
get in my thinking, and the less persuaded I am that any
voluntary program of human behaviour and way-of-thinking changes,
legal, economic and political changes, and creative problem-solving,
will be substantial enough, or come soon enough, to deal with the
crisis we face today. I am increasingly convinced that the momentum of
6 billion people's (and doubling every 60 years) insatiable desire to
acquire more, is just too much to overcome in time. And the more I read
and think about the natural crisis behaviours of all living creatures
in extreme overcrowding and resource scarcity conditions, the more I am
persuaded that, if we could take the lid off the population/scarcity
pressure cooker, the other social, political, economic, psychological
and ecological problems we now face might actually solve themselves.
Here's why I think this: Imagine for a moment two very large islands, A
and B, somewhere in time and space. The people of both islands believe
they are alone on their world, and in the universe, and that, since
they've looked for it in vain for years, each group of islanders
believes there is no other land on their world. Now imagine that both
islands are in crisis situations -- badly overpopulated and polluted,
with massively inequitable distribution of resources, power and wealth,
and constant war, violence and bloodshed. Suppose that the human
population of island A is growing at 1% per year -- doubling every
sixty years, every average lifetime. But there is a new virus on island
B, taking the lives of 3% of the population each year, in an apparently
random way, so that island's population is actually dropping by 2% each year.
On island B, I believe, any of
the prescriptions for change I've listed above -- from Ghandi's 'be the
change' to Quinn's 'walk away, build a new culture and others will
follow', or even a Cultural Metamorphosis -- will probably work,
because the population pressure that underlies all of the other
problems is being alleviated, and creating the opportunity for a new
start, the building of a new evolutionary culture that will prevent
these problems from arising again. In fact, such a metamorphosis might
not only be possible on this island, it might be inevitable,
because the scarcity necessary to sustain war, violence, the hoarding
of resources and the power and authority of the rich elite will quickly
and simply dissipate. The people of island B can, and will, 'walk away'
from the dysfunctional culture and economy that they will blame for the
passing crisis, and build one, or many, diverse and sustainable
cultures better suited to their new reality.
But on island A, there is no such opportunity. There is no time, and no
space, to try out evolutionary change, no breathing room for widespread
public debate or to create awareness of the urgent need for lower
fertility, simpler living, less consumption and more equitable
distribution of resources. The rich will keep spending more and more of
their money and resources protecting what they have from
ever-increasing numbers of ever-more-desperate poor, seeing and dealing
with only the symptoms (e.g. suicide bombers) of the crisis, and not
its underlying cause. The poor will remain convinced that large
families -- the labour of which is the only resource they have and can
control, the only asset they have of value -- are a critical means of
support and survival. On the television stations of island A, the news
will all be about current wars, corporate corruption, epidemic disease,
the need for more growth, and parochial politics -- there will be no
widespread awareness of the crisis, let alone intelligent discussion of
its causes and possible solutions. On island A, like on our world
today, there is not enough time, and there is no reasonable way out.
So I'm intrigued and enlightened by the Cultural Metamorphosis
solution. But I despair that its chrysalis can survive the coming
winter, and fear that its butterfly is doomed to be still-born.
(Graphic above is from Thank You For Not Breeding, a film and flash animation by Nina Paley)
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