An Inconvenient Apocalypse: Environmental Collapse, Climate Crisis, and the Fate of Humanity

Product Information

I believe “we” all will suffer in the coming Apocalypse — but who is this “we” that has the agency to “transcend”? I have no say in dealing with any of the “multiple cascading crises” or transcending the “growth economy”. Now Walter Brueggemann is anything but a Fundamentalist. He’s a modern biblical critic employing all the tools of rhetorical criticism to his chosen object of the study: the Hebrew Bible. And he has employed that methodology to highlight how the “Christian nation” of America is anything but by biblical standards. This perspective is mirrored in Bill McGuire’s Hothouse Earth , yet another new book on the crisis. McGuire writes: An Inconvenient Apocalypse is one powerful book. It will move many of its readers out of the past and into a reasonable, informed, and passionate space for assessing a difficult future." — Ecological Economics Scope: Our magical thinking about the relationship of the growth economy and the ecosphere in a finite world allows us to believe that an economics of endless growth will not end badly. This bleak future is “not pleasant…to ponder and prepare for, so it’s not surprising that many people, especially those in societies where affluence is based on dense energy and advanced technology, clamor for solutions to be able to keep the energy flowing and the technology advancing.” Thus, our civil religion tainted by technological fundamentalism becomes necessary [(5); the term is originally from David W. Orr]. Regarding fundamentalism of any kind – scientistic instead of scientific, religious, political, economic – I follow Janisse Ray who wrote that “ fundamentalism thrives only where imagination has died” (paraphrase from Wild Card Quilt: Taking a Chance on Home, 2004). Along with fundamentalism comes the naked hubris leading us to believe that humans understand complex questions definitively. No, we never do.

An Inconvenient Apocalypse - Notre Dame University Press

We humans have made a mess of things, which is readily evident if we face the avalanche of studies and statistics describing the contemporary ecological crises we face. But even with the mounting evidence of the consequences for people and the ecosphere, we have not committed to a serious project to slow the damage that we do. Those who have little or no access to wealth and power would be within their rights to object, on the grounds that the “we” diffuses responsibility. Who has made a mess of things and who has failed to act? Who’s to blame for the problems and who’s responsible for the costs? Put more bluntly, borrowing from the imagined exchange between the Lone Ranger and Tonto when they were in a tough fight with Indians, “What do you mean, we, white man?” Some of the suggestions and/or conclusions will be very difficult to impossible to implement. “But it’s safe to say that if our goal is long-term sustainability, the number is well below eight billion people. A lot fewer people, consuming a lot less.”I would argue for stewardship. I would argue for looking at the Flowers of Saint Francis instead of the Book of Revelations. And there’s always Buddhism and the prayers for *all* sentient beings. An Inconvenient Apocalypse excels at making difficult concepts easily understandable through skillful use of thought experiments. In one, we’re asked to imagine how history might have unfolded differently had the contiguous United States, rather than western Europe, been blessed with the conditions that first paved the way for the industrial revolution. In another, we’re given a scenario in which socialism, instead of capitalism, established itself as the dominant economic system of the industrial world. Both of these thought experiments make crucial points about the reality of geographic determinism in history and humanity’s susceptibility to “the temptations of dense energy,” and they do so in a simple, accessible manner. Our climate is being destroyed by unadulterated, free-market capitalism – an ideology that simply cannot be sustained on a small planet with limited resources. It is a system that has no interest in the greater good and that rewards inordinate capital and the few that have it, rather than the majority who don’t. It cares nothing for the environment or biodiversity and doesn’t give a fig about the fate of future generations. In fact, it is exactly the wrong economic system to have in place at a time of global crisis. The bankruptcy of the system is especially well upheld in the grossly asymmetric partitioning of carbon emissions between the rich elite and everyone else.

AN INCONVENIENT APOCALYPSE: - Mud City Press AN INCONVENIENT APOCALYPSE: - Mud City Press

three different relationships among systems of political and cultural power, the royal, prophetic, and apocalyptic Our thesis: While not every individual or culture is equally culpable, the human failure over the past 10,000 years is the result of the imperative of all life to seek out energy-rich carbon. Humans play that energy-seeking game armed with an expansive cognitive capacity and a species propensity to cooperate and develop a complex division of labor. That’s a way of saying that humans are smart, and we know how to coordinate our activities to leverage our smarts. Specific individuals and societies are morally accountable for their failures, and certain political and economic systems are central to those failures. But the failures are also the result of the kind of organisms we are. Both things are true, and both things are relevant.

Sign Up For Our Newsletter

In chapter 4, “A Saving Remnant,” they discuss the need to make the coming collapse as “soft” as possible. They do this in the context of the biblical idea of a “saving remnant.” They return to this semi-biblical theme in chapter 5, “Ecospheric Grace,” noting that for two non-religious people, they use a lot of religious language. In conclusion, there is a crisis of consumption — too much of it.

Review: An Inconvenient Apocalypse by Wes Jackson and Robert

Scale, scope and speed refer, respectively, to the natural size limit of human social groups, the maximum technological level of a sustainable industrial infrastructure and the speed with which humanity must undergo its transition toward a sustainable society. The authors cite 150 people as the natural size limit of a human community, a figure rooted in human cognitive capacity and known as “Dunbar’s number.” They argue compellingly for an industrial infrastructure that is technologically simpler and far less energy-intensive than today’s. As for the speed with which we must shift our society onto a sustainable path, they say we need to do so “faster than we have been and faster than it appears we are capable of.” Since ‘Brave New War’, Robb has been a go-to for those trying to apply Boyd to business, by nimble maneuver in a complex environment. They could’t quite grasp Robb saying it’s different now, that network trends toward centralization now requires alignment for reputation purposes. First, it should be uncontroversial to assert the antiracist principle, anchored in basic biology, that we are one species. There are observable differences in such things as skin color and hair texture, as well as some patterns in predisposition to disease based on ancestors’ geographic origins, but the idea of separate races was created by humans and is not found in nature. This is true of us individually and collectively. The conditions under which a culture emerged may have led to ecologically sustainable living arrangements, but those living arrangements would have been different if initial conditions had been different. If Culture A created an ecologically sustainable way to live and Culture B created an unsustainable system, it is important to highlight the differences, endorse Culture A, and try to change Culture B. But if the geography, climate, and environmental conditions out of which the two cultures emerged had been different, then what would A and B look like?The problems with capitalism. “If system change should come tomorrow—if capitalism were replaced by an egalitarian economic system focused not on endless growth and profit but on people’s needs—how easy would it be for everyone to give up most of the comforts to which we have grown accustomed, comforts that are directly implicated in ecosphere degradation?” “That starts with recognizing the need to transcend capitalism and the current politics designed to serve capitalists, in pursuit of an equitable distribution of wealth within planetary boundaries.” In short, we need to use whatever free will we have to understand the determinism that is at work to shape our choices. This is of course a logical conundrum, but it is an apt description of the human condition. Centuries of philosophical and scientific inquiry haven’t done much to change this. We try to deepen our understanding of deterministic forces while living as if we have expansive free will. That doesn’t end the debates about free will and determinism, but it captures our experience. John Robb’s latest conversation is on a podcast named ‘ No Way Out‘. That refers to Boyd’s original name for the Conceptual Spiral of the OODA loop. It refers to “the requirement to re-orient and break models” in an uncertain world. The development of those technologies was not the product of inherently superior intelligence of people in particular regions of the world—remember, we are committed to an antiracist principle that flows from basic biology. That means the forces that led to the creation of those technologies must have been generated by the specific environmental conditions under which that culture developed over time. Likewise, the lower rate of carbon depletion that results from the absence of those technologies cannot be a marker of inherently superior intelligence of people in particular regions but is instead the product of environmental conditions. In a significant sense, the trajectory of people and their cultures is the product of the continent and specific region in which they have lived. The migration isn’t going to happen because “it’s cheaper”. It won’t be cheaper to run E2.0 until it has enough time to optimize itself. E1.0 has had all of human history to become “efficient” (price efficient, so long as costs are externalized). Expecting E2.0 to be price competitive with E1.0 is unrealistic for a few decades to come.

An Inconvenient Apocalypse with Bob Jensen (Bonus episode of An Inconvenient Apocalypse with Bob Jensen (Bonus episode of

Discusses the four hard questions that are essential to confront now. “What is the sustainable size of the human population?” My definition of an “economy” is “how and from where do you get what you need to operate your household”. By supporting getting rid of technology which creates food production,you and your children will starve’ In that it is an ideal human community, one that has become increasingly rare if not impossible in our modern neoliberal world.

Wes Jackson and Robert Jensen's

This essay is adapted from An Inconvenient Apocalypse: Environmental Collapse, Climate Crisis, and the Fate of Humanity.] The authors have coined the term "ecospheric grace" to describe their vision of an ideal orientation toward the natural world. To show ecospheric grace is to humble ourselves before the rest of nature. It is to accept that we humans aren't at the center of everything, that we'll never completely understand the natural world of which we're a part and that nature doesn't favor us over any other species. It is thus also to reject the ideal of Earth stewardship, since stewardship implies authority and control. Our goal should instead be to return the biosphere's favor of "the gift of life with no strings attached" by treating it well.