Renewables Projected to Soon Be One-Fourth of US Electricity Generation. Really Soon

[Ashwani Vasishth]

I'm not trying to challenge Rees' solid analysis.  Just pointing to actual shifts in reality.  Hence, "wicked problems."

Renewables Projected to Soon Be One-Fourth of US Electricity Generation. Really Soon

I got to this from a new "discovery" on my part:

Econ4: Economics for people, for the planet and for the future

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Our aim is to change both the economics profession and common-sense understanding about how the economy works and should work. For this we need to disseminate new ideas, train the new generation of scholars and public intellectuals, and advance new research agendas.

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     Ashwani
        Vasishth         vasi...@ramapo.edu          (201) 684-6616 (Jabber-enabled)
                   http://phobos.ramapo.edu/~vasishth
          --------------------------------------------------------
                      Professor of Sustainability
                  Convener, Sustainability Program (BA)
              Convenor, Environmental Studies Program (BA)
                    Director, Center for Sustainability
                      http://ramapo.edu/ramapo-green
                     http://ramapo.edu/sustainability

You can ALWAYS set up an Appointment with me, without negotiation, seven days a week,
              at: https://calendly.com/vasishth/webex-meeting

                       Ramapo College of New Jersey
              505 Ramapo Valley Road, SSHS, Mahwah, NJ 07430
         --------------------------------------------------------

I respectfully acknowledge that Ramapo College is located on the ancestral and traditional Indigenous territory of the Ramapough Lenape Nation.

[Richard Rosen]

Of course, we need renewables to be 100% of electricity generation by 2035, not only 26% by 2024, as indicated in the figure.  This illustrates how far behind the US is even from a tech fix perspective.  --- Rich Rosen

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[Rees, William E.]

Hi all -

The following exchange seems to have gone astray: 

Rich -

But keep in mind -- I think electricity supplies only 20% plus or minus of US final energy demand. What about the other 80%?

Bill

That is the additional problem, but I think electricity provides about 37% of the total energy.  And one key reason why electricity must reach 100% renewable energy first, is so that as the other sectors convert there non-electric technologies to electric technologies, there are no residual emissions after 2035 from the electricity.  But I am sure you know this, Bill...  Rich

Well, Rich --

Globally, electricity in 2021 was still about 20% of total final consumption; in the US it's a bit higher at 21.7% (see https://yearbook.enerdata.net/electricity/share-electricity-final-consumption.html )

It will be difficult if not impossible to convert the other 78%+ to electricity in the next dozen years.  Practical hwy trucks, ships and aircraft are still more than a decade away and fleet replacement will take additional years.  Many high-heat industrial applications are also hard to electrify.  As for construction, road and facilities/infrastructure maintenance, space and water heating, I'm told we need a massive build-out of battery or other storage capacity for these to be fully electrified reliably, particularly in northern climes where solar capacity factors  may be as little as 10% .

Another problem is, that the manufacturing of the batteries for EVs and storage, the massive additions  to wind and solar electricity generating capacity, and the replacement of all fossil fuel using equipment with electric versions will mostly require FF energy.   (BTW, large and mid-sized EVs are ecologically no better and are arguably socially worse than internal combustion engine vehicles so what do we gain apart for cleaner urban air in some places, dirtier in others?) 

Bottom line: To be called a truly green, practical source of energy a technology system like wind turbines (must be replaced every 15-20 years) and solar panels (junk after 25-30 years) must be capable of generating sufficient usable energy to produce/maintain/replace themselves, literally from the ground up, while providing sufficient surplus energy to provide all the other energy needs of society.  

Does any energy source apart from FF meet this test?

A valuable  demonstration (pilot project) would be a wind/solar power facility that is capable of mining, transporting, refining, manufacturing, installing and maintaining in perpetuity all the equipment constituting the power system itself (including distribution systems required roads and related infrastructure, etc.) and generating sufficient additional energy to run an adjacent town.   

If we  don't get there, we can look forward to a much lower energy future. 

Bill

---

From: sco...@googlegroups.com <sco...@googlegroups.com> on behalf of Richard Rosen <richard...@gmail.com>
Sent: Friday, January 20, 2023 6:01:39 AM
To: ashwani....@gmail.com
Cc: SCORAI Group
Subject: Re: [SCORAI] Renewables Projected to Soon Be One-Fourth of US Electricity Generation. Really Soon

 

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[Richard Rosen]

And then I added:  Bill, I was agreeing with your concerns, precise numbers aside.  You have argued before that the return on energy from all the technologies needed to make the energy system renewable is less than 1.  If true, which it might well be, that precludes a solution to the climate change problem no matter how low consumption is.  I don't think the folks in Scorai realize that yet.  To me, that is the most important issue you have raised.  --- Rich

[Ashwani Vasishth]

Dear Bill and Richard,

My apologies--distracted by the start of my semester.

To be clear, and as I have said before, I do NOT disagree with either of you.  My point was NOT that renewables can even BEGIN to "save us."  I was simply sharing a factoid--however flawed--that I thought OUGHT to be a piece of our reality.

Tom pointed out to me, correctly, that:

"Wind/solar to be 26% of electrical production is how the graph reads- not 26% of total energy production"

To this I say--read the headline.  "One-Fourth of US Electricity Generation."  Who said "total energy production"?

But here's my main point--as it always has been.

We seem to have been dancing around this bush for some time.  Let me try to summarize my own understanding of our lived reality:

• We ARE in Planetary Overshoot, and SOME (not all) of us must radically cut back our collective footprint.
  
• Some of us DO need to (dramatically, even drastically) cut over-consumption, and REDUCE our reliance on fossil fuels.  At least one-fourth of humanity DESPERATELY needs to INCREASE consumption.  WE--US--MUST CARRY THIS BURDEN.
• I reject the call to "no more fossil fuels" as simply a rallying cry--for activism and for fundraising.  But there is no way any of you can alter the fact that we MUST severely and rapidly cut back our reliance on fossil fuels.
• There are ONLY TWO WAYS to do this.  Use less.  Use something else.
  
• We are NOT going to "run out" of oil, in any meaningful way--in the foreseeable future.  But undeniable evidence of scarcity MUST begin to noticeably increase fairly soon.
  
• Not ONE of us is going to walk away from our automobiles or refrigerators or washing machines.  Live with that reality.  (For MANY years, I hand washed ALL my laundry--including bed-sheets and towels.  It would take more than a crowbar and a bundle of dynamite, to get me to go back to that lifestyle.)  NOW WHAT IS TO BE DONE?  Ban consumption-driving advertising?  Start relying on human labor?  OUR OWN HUMAN LABOR? Do you want to be stitching your clothes and cobbling your footwear?
  
• But here's the nub of my position:  We MUST begin to see that there are, broadly, two sorts of issues facing humanity
• those than can, in any meaningful way, be "solved."  (Rittel and Webber's "tame problems," Holling's engineering problems, my mechanical, inanimate problems (they do not change, over time, and everybody can agree to what they see), and
• those that it is dangerous to treat as solvable, because they are "wicked," organic, evolutionary, and definitionally, do not "sit still."  These sorts of problems can NEVER be solved.  They can only be managed.
  
• Climate change is squarely in the latter category.  The idea that we, as a civilization, can even target the idea of "solving" climate change, is ridiculous hubris.  We'd be doing VERY WELL if we can figure out a way to make a difference, to manage.  To some slight degree.
  
• And we all know, very well, that there is no single solution.  No"magic bullet." Because there is no one single depictable reality.  The essence of the wicked problem meme.

We are, ALL OF US, quick to point out how this or that "solution," cannot possibly work.  We cannot stretch our minds to see that--though this is indeed so--together they MIGHT make a difference.  And that's all I am asserting we must aim for.  Make a difference.

All this said, the never-ending arguments that we seem to engage in, within SCORAI, can only (gently) be called "type three errors."  We're simply asking the wrong question.

-- 

     Ashwani
        Vasishth         vasi...@ramapo.edu          (201) 684-6616 (Jabber-enabled)
                   http://phobos.ramapo.edu/~vasishth
          --------------------------------------------------------
                      Professor of Sustainability
                  Convener, Sustainability Program (BA)
              Convenor, Environmental Studies Program (BA)
                    Director, Center for Sustainability
                      http://ramapo.edu/ramapo-green
                     http://ramapo.edu/sustainability

You can ALWAYS set up an Appointment with me, without negotiation, seven days a week,
              at: https://calendly.com/vasishth/webex-meeting

                       Ramapo College of New Jersey
              505 Ramapo Valley Road, SSHS, Mahwah, NJ 07430
         --------------------------------------------------------

I respectfully acknowledge that Ramapo College is located on the ancestral and traditional Indigenous territory of the Ramapough Lenape Nation.

To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/scorai/CAMZghTbO2jNm9N7vN8HBDFpiSuSM5QJ0y5wQ6Xp136eUjf_iqQ%40mail.gmail.com.

[Rees, William E.]

Then there is the larger issue of simply extending overshoot which is ultimately a fatal condition.  Here's a similar lament: 

https://tsakraklides.com/2022/09/25/the-myth-of-clean-energy/
Bill

---

From: wrees <wr...@mail.ubc.ca>
Sent: Friday, January 20, 2023 9:12:25 AM
To: richard...@gmail.com

Subject: Re: [SCORAI] Renewables Projected to Soon Be One-Fourth of US Electricity Generation. Really Soon

But keep in mind -- I think electricity supplies only 20% plus or minus of US final energy demand. What about the other 80%?

Sent from my Galaxy

[Ashwani Vasishth]

Dear Bill,

First, know that I love your mind.  I truly do.  And I know, with certainty, that both your analysis and diagnoses are most likely very close to spot on.

But when people point out weaknesses in proposed action, I have to ask if this is a flag of caution--something to be thought about and planned for--or an objection to stop action to ANY amount. 

We are NOT going to solve this issue.  We may well be doomed.  But if we can tweak 20% of the source, should we not, because we leave 80% unaddressed?

-- 

     Ashwani
        Vasishth         vasi...@ramapo.edu          (201) 684-6616 (Jabber-enabled)
                   http://phobos.ramapo.edu/~vasishth
          --------------------------------------------------------
                      Professor of Sustainability
                  Convener, Sustainability Program (BA)
              Convenor, Environmental Studies Program (BA)
                    Director, Center for Sustainability
                      http://ramapo.edu/ramapo-green
                     http://ramapo.edu/sustainability

You can ALWAYS set up an Appointment with me, without negotiation, seven days a week,
              at: https://calendly.com/vasishth/webex-meeting

                       Ramapo College of New Jersey
              505 Ramapo Valley Road, SSHS, Mahwah, NJ 07430
         --------------------------------------------------------

I respectfully acknowledge that Ramapo College is located on the ancestral and traditional Indigenous territory of the Ramapough Lenape Nation.

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[Tom Walker]

One-quarter of 20%, which is to say 5%.

Cheers,

Tom Walker (Sandwichman)

[Ashwani Vasishth]

Not sure if you mean "not worth it," Tom.

But if it is:

1. Isn't 5% better than zero?
2. Is it written in stone that we can only either walk, or chew gum?

--
Ashwani
     Vasi...@ramapo.edu
(323) 206-1858
Professor of Sustainability
Director, Center for Sustainability

Ramapo College of New Jersey

Set an appointment with me:
https://calendly.com/vasishth/webex-meeting

Sent from my BlackBerry Key2

From: lumpo...@gmail.com Sent: January 21, 2023 6:35 PM To: ashwani....@gmail.com Cc: sco...@googlegroups.com Subject: Re: [SCORAI] Renewables Projected to Soon Be One-Fourth of US Electricity Generation. Really Soon

[Ruben Anderson]

Ashwani, we may be able to walk and chew gum—but that example is often used a cudgel, which is ironic given how difficult it is to rub your belly and pat your head at the same time. 

Even so, very few of us can walk and chew gum and juggle at the same time. But the actual problem is that none of us are simply doing two things at once, we are all doing ten thousand things at once and some of those things are very intensive, like working, parenting, schooling, coaching, cooking, etc. 

As far as whether 5% is better than zero, in my talks I point out that it would be often better to do nothing. Let me explain:

We have very limited cognitive capacity, and most of us are using most of it all the time, just to get through life. 

We have very little surplus cognitive capacity, and it is very easily used up. So, when someone knocks on my door to talk about the local puppy rescue, I can’t be thinking about fresh water on reserves, school for girls in Afghanistan, industrial composting system using chickens, or resettling coastal cities to adapt to climate change. 

When we ask for attention, when we consume attention, it can’t be used for other things. 

Since it requires enormous amounts of focussed and coordinated attention to make any of the system changes we are talking about happen, it is a very real likelihood that most issues will never get cross a critical threshold of attention (as needed for fundraising, communications, lobbying, social proof, direct action etc.)

So, flat out, we can walk and chew gum, but we can’t also convert our energy systems to renewables at the same time. 

And 5% better on a half dozen things is quite likely worse than actually crossing a critical threshold of success on just one thing, had we been able to gather and coordinate attention (and other resources).

That 5% is almost certainly stabbing another issue in the back. 

Unfortunately, humans are doing the best we can. We are not evil, lazy or stupid, we just have limited cognitive capacity and cannot make sense of and make effective systemic responses most of the time. 

Why are we failing to meet the challenges of pandemic?

Why are we failing to meet the challenges of climate change?

Not because we are bad people, or stupid people, but just because this is the best we can do—and sadly that is not going to be good enough to maintain high technology societies and some of the goods we enjoy using. 

Warmly, 

Ruben (not Nelson).

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[Ashwani Vasishth]

Dear Ruben,

Okay, I take back the walk/chew gum metaphor.  But that was NOT my point.  Each one of says--there's no such thing as a magic bullet.  Yet, way too often, each one of us assess potential actions one at a time.  "This cannot save us."  So it is not worth considering?

I KNOW renewables are not going to "save us."  So should we NOT use renewables?  Or promote them?  Does a strategy have to "save us," before we will consider it as ONE part of a complex set of actions we can deploy as a civiization?

Beyond that, and way more trivially, you say, in sequence:

When we ask for attention, when we consume attention, it can’t be used for other things.

    So what are we using one another's attention for, here?  We're certainly not making any perceptible progress.

convert our energy systems to renewables at the same time.

    is "converting our energy systems" ENTIRELY to renewables the only circumstance we can consider?

but just because this is the best we can do

    I disagree.  As a civilization we have not even BEGUN to act.

But my biggest grouse is this--we treat "renewables" definitionally as PV and Wind.  This is what gets me riled the most.

I read Steward Brand's Whole Earth Catalog, out of pavement stores in Delhi, in the early 1970s as an undergraduate college student.  In INDIA, in the 1970s.  How many of us have even SEEN a Whole Earth Catalog?  Let along exponentially growing the WEC into a web-based archive--free knowledge for the human race.

MANY houses in India have plain black PVC water heating panels on their roofs.  This will NOT deliver the kind of hot water we like in our pipes.  But it WOULD cut our energy use to SOME degree.  Show me ONE that you have seen in this sophisticated country?  Who, today, talks about passive energy. conservation and efficiency with the same passion we seem to be able to put into PVs and Wind?  For or against?  Funnel all that energy into DOING something, and we begin to move the world.

We KNOW that conservation and efficiency are a fuel in themselves.  Where are we on this front?

The things we KNOW would make a difference are not even on our horizon.  No, sir.  This is NOT "the best we can do."  Not even close.

-- 

     Ashwani
        Vasishth         vasi...@ramapo.edu          (201) 684-6616 (Jabber-enabled)
                   http://phobos.ramapo.edu/~vasishth
          --------------------------------------------------------
                      Professor of Sustainability
                  Convener, Sustainability Program (BA)
              Convenor, Environmental Studies Program (BA)
                    Director, Center for Sustainability
                      http://ramapo.edu/ramapo-green
                     http://ramapo.edu/sustainability

You can ALWAYS set up an Appointment with me, without negotiation, seven days a week,
              at: https://calendly.com/vasishth/webex-meeting

                       Ramapo College of New Jersey
              505 Ramapo Valley Road, SSHS, Mahwah, NJ 07430
         --------------------------------------------------------

I respectfully acknowledge that Ramapo College is located on the ancestral and traditional Indigenous territory of the Ramapough Lenape Nation.

[Rees, William E.]

Ruben (not Nelson) -

Very  well  stated.  Humans have very limited cognitive capacity -- we evolved in relatively simple circumstance and hence tend to think in simplistic, reductionist terms. We don't get complexity so are being confounded by a world of increasingly entangled, overlapping 

complex systems. We are where we are because, from within the MTI mindset, "... this is the best we can do."

Bill 

---

From: sco...@googlegroups.com <sco...@googlegroups.com> on behalf of Ruben Anderson <anderso...@gmail.com>
Sent: Saturday, January 21, 2023 4:26:10 PM
To: Ashwani Vasishth
Cc: SCORAI Group

Subject: Re: [SCORAI] Renewables Projected to Soon Be One-Fourth of US Electricity Generation. Really Soon

 

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[Ruben Anderson]

Now we are having fun Ashwani! I agree with almost everything you say here…though of course with important caveats.  :-)

I grew up in an underground passive solar house that would have been right at home in the Whole Earth Catalogue, so I agree completely with your assessment and frustration about renewable energy. 

And yes, SCORAI members talking to each other is of very dubious value. There is definitely a lot attention consumed, not followed by a reduction of ecological impact or greenhouse gases. 

The first point that I think is a disagreement between us is "As a civilization we have not even BEGUN to act.”

I take that to mean you think we CAN act, but we are choosing not to. 

I spent several years running on the ground pilot tests on pro-environmental behaviour change—things like recycling and composting. I read stacks of studies and cold-called researchers—and I weighed recycling with a bathroom scale, building probably the finest-grained recycling data ever collected.

Obviously I looked at lots of brain stuff, like Daniel Kahneman and Roy Baumeister, but especially Alex Bentley at UBristol and Sandy Pentland at MIT. 

And I read Bruce Alexander, who ran the famous Rat Park study; and his colleague Gabor Mate.

Out of all this, there is a parsimonious explanation that neatly fits the data, but it requires a shift in perspective, a different causality. 

And that is that we are doing the best we can. 

Humans are amazing. We have evolved over millions of years, creating tools, making fire, hunting, agriculture. I just saw a story today suggesting the first marine travel may have been half a million years ago. We went from Kitty Hawk to the man on the moon in 66 years. 

So we are explorers, innovators, creative, brilliant, hardworking. 

And so why don't we solve overshoot? 

It is because we can’t. 

If we could, we would have already. 

We are doing the best we can. 

This is fundamentally a radically empathetic position. Everyone is just doing the best they can. If you don’t understand why someone is behaving some way, it is not because they are bad people, it is because they have and do live a different life. 

This really shows the need for systems change. Everybody is already doing the best they can, so no wonder the success rate of asking them to do more is so low. 

We need to change the system so their attention is not required. 

Our brains evolved to run our body, and not much more than that. Our brain has not evolved to solve these global-scale cooperation dilemmas. 

Changing systems is hard. If it was as easy as putting a man on the moon we would have done it already. 

And it is not just organizational change. We probably actually don’t physically have the resources for the renewable transition the bright green hopeheads want. 

And so I am a collapsenik. I don’t think we have the social or material capacity to make the changes we need to make in order to keep this high consumption, high technology society running. 

Which means it won’t keep running. 

Now, I am big fan of designing to be fail-safe. When an elevator fails, it is a death trap. When an escalator fails, it is stairs. So yes, I absolutely think we should use the last bits of affordable oil to put up as many solar collectors as possible. PV panels anywhere, because a little bit of light or power for a radio will be very welcome. Solar hot water for sure, because staying clean is probably the most important way to cope with a collapsing medical system. 

Do I want to make our national grid 5% better? No. I think that is more like an elevator. 

Do I think it would be a good idea to work on strengthening regional and municipal grids? Very much so.

Do I want the “hydrogen highway” to get 5, 10, or 15% better? No, I think that would be a stupid waste of attention, resources, and time. 

Do I care much about plastic straw bans? Not really. 

Walkable communities, well-insulated buildings, local food. Those are the three things I rattle off. 

Sure, I would love to have an excellent rail network, not so concerned with high speed. More renewable electricity will be great, even if only for hospitals and schools. 

And you are right, there is so much with efficiency that could be done. It is technically possible to make incredible change. 

But we are doing the best we can. It is not socially possible, not individually possible to make that change. 

It is not an information deficit. There is ten thousand times more information online than was ever contained in the Whole Earth Catalogue. More knowledge than you could ever dream of. 

But lack of knowledge is not the problem. 

And there are thousands of well-meaning projects that have no hope of success, and that will never shift the needle. Each one of those thousands of projects is spending—consuming—attention and resources. 

I think most of the time it would be much better for people to stay home and garden.

This is not a fun understanding of the world, but this is the understanding I have arrived at after studying and working on different facets of this problem since 2001. I grew up with all of same myths and gods as anybody else in Canada, and it was a hard fight as I lost each one. As you say, SCORAI members talking to to each other is probably not going to help much, and yet here I am, old habits die hard, using The Word like it will fix anything, like these pixels have any power.

I can hear your frustration, the rage of knowing how technically small the problem is, and yet the most technologically advanced societies in history can’t help but trip on their own shoelaces. 

The technical problems are small, but the non-technical problems are defeating us. I share your rage, and it is my constant practice to remind myself that we are doing the best we can. I grieve. 

With love, 

Ruben.

[Noel Gerard Keough]

Great conversation. Two very small points to make. 

1. Re Gabor Mate. Yes we are doing the best we can. But! We can also do better he says by changing culture. We can stand and face our personal to cultural traumas and miraculous things can happen

2. The entire world is not imperialist, colonialist or modern so let’s not discount that solutions may come from beyond the not quite all-dominant MTI.

I just read a piece by Rebecca Solnit in The Guardian I really liked. She says ‘despair is a delusion of confidence that asserts it knows what’s coming‘ and ends the piece with ‘we see no farther than the little halo that is cast by our lantern, but we can travel all night by that light’

Cheers

Noel

Sent from my iPhone

On Jan 21, 2023, at 9:11 PM, Ruben Anderson <anderso...@gmail.com> wrote:



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[Ashwani Vasishth]

Thank you, Ruben.

You have given me much to think about.

I will not take this further, here.  But I will let this steep in my mind.

-- 

     Ashwani
        Vasishth         vasi...@ramapo.edu          (201) 684-6616 (Jabber-enabled)
                   http://phobos.ramapo.edu/~vasishth
          --------------------------------------------------------
                      Professor of Sustainability
                  Convener, Sustainability Program (BA)
              Convenor, Environmental Studies Program (BA)
                    Director, Center for Sustainability
                      http://ramapo.edu/ramapo-green
                     http://ramapo.edu/sustainability

You can ALWAYS set up an Appointment with me, without negotiation, seven days a week,
              at: https://calendly.com/vasishth/webex-meeting

                       Ramapo College of New Jersey
              505 Ramapo Valley Road, SSHS, Mahwah, NJ 07430
         --------------------------------------------------------

I respectfully acknowledge that Ramapo College is located on the ancestral and traditional Indigenous territory of the Ramapough Lenape Nation.

[Rees, William E.]

Friends -

At the risk of prolonging this discussion, but in the hope of bending it in a different direction, I have a favour to ask.  I wonder whether we have given enough thought to why so little progress?.  Is it because "we haven't begun to act" as Ashwani very hopefully suggests or more because "we are already doing the best we can" as Ruben (not Nelson) put it.  

I had already begun to think a bit about this in connection with another project.  The question I asked is "can we identify the major barriers to resolving the overshoot crisis." I approach this (by default of training) from the biological/ecological perspective and suggest that many stumbling blocks are innate, that they are variations of heritable, once adaptive survival strategies that have been ‘selected for’ in the course of human evolution.  (So this note is rather compatible with Ruben A's  notion that "our brains evolved to run our body, and not much more than that.")

  Here's what I came up with -- I'd be grateful ffor critique or additions: 

• Humans, like all other species, are capable of exponential population growth and tend to use accessible food and other resources as soon as possible[i] (The later highly adaptive behavior increased immediate material security in the absence of refrigeration or when competition was intense.) Together these traits, when enabled by improved population health and the abundance of resources made possible by fossil fuels, explain the explosive growth of the human ecological footprint over the past two centuries.[ii] In effect, they show that, unleashed, MTI peoples are inherently unsustainable.[iii]
• H. sapiens evolved under relatively simple, more or less predictable environments that posed limited challenges to our developing cognitive mechanisms. People are therefore predisposed to think in simplistic, reductionist, mechanistic ways. Modern humans still focus on one issue at time—climate change, the pandemic, biodiversity loss, ocean acidification—generally failing to connect the dots among what are actually co-symptoms of overshoot (how many have even heard of overshoot?). Simple cause/effect cognition was adequate in pre-holocene times, but evolutionary history has arguably left contemporary humans incapable of coping with the complexity of our radically unpredictable and increasingly unstable modern world.  Will we be ‘selected out’ by a hostile environment of our own making? 
• Humans are naturally myopic.[iv] Even economists recognize that most people are temporal, social and spatial discounters—we favor the here-and-now and close relatives/friends over the future, distant places and total strangers. Rather than ‘harm’ their own people today by implementing the kinds of policies necessary to eliminate overshoot (or simply reverse climate change), politicians would rather risk the welfare and lives of future generations of people, particularly those in far-away countries.
• Humans naturally form hierarchical social structures. Those high in the pecking order (e.g., with the most material wealth) claim a disproportionate degree of sociopolitical power. For example, environmental protection is compromised in many contemporary societies by ‘agency capture,’ the process by which corporate interests infiltrate or otherwise co-opt corresponding regulatory agencies so that the latter come to identify with, and protect the interests of,  the industry rather than the public good. [v]  In short, monied elites strenuously resist social forces that threaten their privileged status quo.  One result: despite fifty years of climate conferences and agreements to eliminate carbon dioxide emissions, atmospheric carbon levels are still rising exponentially.[vi] 
• Even ordinary citizens are reluctant to sacrifice their comfortable lifestyles for the general welfare of humankind, present or future.  Economists recognize this as a variation on the ‘public good/free rider problem.’  “Why should I give up my vacation house and automobile to reduce my carbon footprint for the public good, particularly if few others do?  I would be making a significant sacrifice in exchange for an infinitesimal share of the benefits.  Meanwhile, other people would get a free ride on my ‘gift’ to the public.”
• Humans are inherently creatures of habit. Cognitive neurobiologists have shown that repeated experiences, ideas, and thought processes literally help to configure the synaptic circuitry of the developing brain.[vii] Once a particular pattern is inscribed, individuals tend to seek out other people or experiences that reinforce their neural presets. Conversely, “when faced with information that does not agree with their internal structures, they deny, discredit, reinterpret, or forget that information”[viii] Thus, assertions of certainty thus arise “out of involuntary brain mechanisms that, like love or anger, function independently of reason.”[ix] It seems that climate and overshoot denial have a neuro-cognitive basis. This trait obviously contributes significantly to the seemingly unstoppable momentum of growth- and technology-obsessed MTI global culture.

Your thought?

Thanks, 

Bill

---

[i] Normally, population dynamics reflect a fluctuating balance between positive feedback (exponential potential) and negative feedback (e.g., disease, food and other resource shortages).

[ii]  Since the early 19^th Century, the human population has expanded eightfold from one to eight billion and real gross world product (~consumption) by over 100-fold.  With exponential growth, half the fossil fuels ever used have been consumed in just the past 30+ years (see: https://ourworldindata.org/economic-growth  and https://ourworldindata.org/fossil-fuels .)

[iii] C. Fowler and L. Hobbs, “Is humanity sustainable?” Proceedings of the Royal Society of London B (2003) 270(1533):2579–2583.

[iv] See M. Pratarelli, Myopic man: On the nature and universality of human self-deception and its long-term effects on our environment (Medici Publishing, 2008).

[v] See D. Carpenter and  D. A. Moss (eds.), Preventing Regulatory Capture – Special Interest Influence and How to Limit It (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2014)

[vi] See https://gml.noaa.gov/ccgg/trends/.

[vii] This was a highly adaptive trait, assisting individuals easily to acquire the beliefs, values, and norms of their tribe which, in turn, confer a sense of personal identity and reinforces group cohesion.

[viii] See B. Wexler, Brain and Culture: Neurobiology, Ideology and Social Change, p.180. (Cambridge,MA: MIT Press, 2006).                                                             

[ix] R.A. Burton, On Being Certain – Believing You are Right Even When You Are Not (p.xi) (New York: St Martin’s Press, 2008).

---

From: sco...@googlegroups.com <sco...@googlegroups.com> on behalf of Ashwani Vasishth <ashwani....@gmail.com>
Sent: Sunday, January 22, 2023 6:05:38 AM
To: Ruben Anderson
Cc: SCORAI Group

Subject: Re: [SCORAI] Renewables Projected to Soon Be One-Fourth of US Electricity Generation. Really Soon

 

[CAUTION: Non-UBC Email]

To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/scorai/3809b551-cf5c-2e0b-8642-e804606ed282%40gmail.com.

[Joe Zammit-Lucia]

Dear All

This has been a fascinating conversation. I am left with a couple of questions: 

- there has been much talk (at least as I have understood it) that it’s foolish to believe that technology will provide the answer to climate issues. My question is the opposite: does anyone believe that we can address climate issues WITHOUT technological advances or playing a role? 

- there has also been much talk about the barriers erected by human behaviour and our civilizational culture. Given that one of the issues to be addressed is speed of change before tipping points are reached, does anyone believe that we can fundamentally change human behaviour and our civilisational culture on a global level (even if it’s possible at all) within a time frame that will make a difference to climate change progression? 

Would be grateful for views. 

Best

Joe

Dr Joe Zammit-Lucia

+44 7398 353 404

jo...@me.com

newpoliticalcapitalism.com I get on Amazon

To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/scorai/614c4b8037bb49dd9054ba0d2e08bd92%40mail.ubc.ca.

[Rees, William E.]

Hi Joe -

A couple of quick 'off the top' reflections.  

1a) In theory the world (humans) could address the climate crisis much more effectively than at present, without technology, by transition to more sustainable less energy dependent lifestyles but they won't (see previous bits of this thread) By the way, so far technology has arguably worsened the crisis -- which leads me to my next point.

1b) As I have argued previously, climate change isn't the real issue, overshoot is.  Climate disruption is caused by and is a symptom of overshoot.  Technological approaches to climate change are not only unlikely to fix the climate, but they also tend to create complacency and stimulate further material growth (in fact, they are designed to do so -- look and the frenzy of subsidies for job creation, etc., going into EVs even as these grow in size and weight to the point that attendant carbon dioxide emissions are no better than ICE vehicles and other eco-damage much worse) all of which exacerbates overshoot.

2) Can we "fundamentally change human behaviour and our civilisational culture on a global level (even if it’s possible at all) within a time frame that will make a difference to climate change progression?"  No. there is little evidence to support this proposition. 

Bill

---

From: Joe Zammit-Lucia <jo...@me.com>
Sent: Sunday, January 22, 2023 8:23:11 AM
To: Rees, William E.
Cc: Ruben Anderson; ashwani....@gmail.com; SCORAI Group

[Tom Abeles]

In response to Joe's question on whether we have time, to me the issue is whether there is a commitment, at what level and from whom. There is a two fold  sub issue which Bill brings up, in part. The first is an inherent fear, primarily from the middle class, of the developed countries, as to the ramifications to their sense of wellbeing propped up by an ever more sophisticated technology to support the illusion, today, primarily with the pastiche of "green technology". The middle class are the policy wonks, academics and a large segment of the government sectors. The second is a serious financial and human resource commitment as if on a war footing.

c.f. https://tsakraklides.com/2022/09/25/the-myth-of-clean-energy/

There are several glimmers of hope:

a) capitalism is seeing an increasing realization regarding the cliche, capitalism for the working class and socialism for the rich

b) there is a movement from theories and analysis, with the idea to go to practice:

   1) Raworth's Doughnut Economics Action Lab, DEAL, now has working manuals for business and hopefully for government

   2) The Wellbeing Economics Alliance now has a government component committed to integrating key issues such as those of the HDI into their policies and action components, WEGO, the Wellbeing Economy Governments partnership, has 5 initial countries, Scotland, Wales, Iceland, Finland and New Zealand with Canada becoming a 6th. Additionally, other countries going forward are developing similar programs. Like DEAL, there are other networks within the Alliance such as country hubs, citizens groups, etc

The keys here are that the private sector is seeing, across the investment community, the need to consider ESG's, Economic, Social and Governance. There is strong opposition from some quarters, as discussed above. The need is for a core commitment beyond theory, of which the planet is indifferent as to whether its top predator, as in the past, causes its own demise.  And, we are seeing governments taking action beyond just adopting one of the myriad of alternatives to GDP.

   

To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/scorai/f0NMX2OACt5eWpbIOI11AbIVVBFfsiQ6JSQW_2Qkw_yOMgTtdXkaEF75p9167WDy%40ip-10-0-10-19.cloze.com.

[Marina Fischer-Kowalski]

Dear Bill,

I think your argument are faulty in several respects.

- If we look at human history, both hierarchical organization and high population growth are matters of particular energy- and socio-political regimes, and not inborn to human nature. For millions of years humans lived as hunter-gatherers with very low population growth and hardly any major social hierachies. Obviously, our nature allowed for this.

- This changed with the invention of agriculture  as a new energy regime with a much higher EROI. There, due to the need to keep possession of the land across seasons, our species gradually evolved highly labour intensive forms of living, high population growth (children as low-food workers), and steep social hierarchies (both religious and socio-political) to exploit human labour.

- The turn to fossil fuels and industrial development allowed us to become functionally much more differentiated and evolve less hierarchical, but much more complex forms of social organization (capitalism, democracy, low population growth), that spread among our species much faster than agriculture did. Our cognitive mechanisms were highly challenged: we learned to think in systemic, complex ways (not everybody equally, I admit).

- These transition processes were not driven biologically, selecting for a chance of better living: The life of peasants was in no ways more comfortable and and pleasant than with hunter-gatherers, but it was evolution by the successful, often mainly by violence of hierarchically organized masses - not by intellectual foresight.

- Now, the human species is in the difficult situation of self-defeating success. Large parts of the species are equipped with unprecedented abilities of foresight, and an unprecedented number of different choices. We can and will respond differently, not by our nature, but by differentiated social interests and our historical learning.

- This does not mean we are going to make it - but it is a matter of social power struggles and our socio-political organization - not of our biological nature.

cheers, marina

>>> "'Rees, William E.' via SCORAI" <sco...@googlegroups.com> 22.01.2023 16:56 >>>

To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/scorai/614c4b8037bb49dd9054ba0d2e08bd92%40mail.ubc.ca.

[Marina Fischer-Kowalski]

Dear Bill,

I think your argument are faulty in several respects.

- If we look at human history, both hierarchical organization and high population growth are matters of particular energy- and socio-political regimes, and not inborn to human nature. For millions of years humans lived as hunter-gatherers with very low population growth and hardly any major social hierachies. Obviously, our nature allowed for this.

- This changed with the invention of agriculture  as a new energy regime with a much higher EROI. There, due to the need to keep possession of the land across seasons, our species gradually evolved highly labour intensive forms of living, high population growth (children as low-food workers), and steep social hierarchies (both religious and socio-political) to exploit human labour.

- The turn to fossil fuels and industrial development allowed us to become functionally much more differentiated and evolve less hierarchical, but much more complex forms of social organization (capitalism, democracy, low population growth), that spread among our species much faster than agriculture did. Our cognitive mechanisms were highly challenged: we learned to think in systemic, complex ways (not everybody equally, I admit).

- These transition processes were not driven biologically, selecting for a chance of better living: The life of peasants was in no ways more comfortable and and pleasant than with hunter-gatherers, but it was evolution by the successful, often mainly by violence of hierarchically organized masses - not by intellectual foresight.

- Now, the human species is in the difficult situation of self-defeating success. Large parts of the species are equipped with unprecedented abilities of foresight, and an unprecedented number of different choices. We can and will respond differently, not by our nature, but by differentiated social interests and our historical learning.

- This does not mean we are going to make it - but it is a matter of social power struggles and our socio-political organization - not of our biological nature.

cheers, marina

>>> "'Rees, William E.' via SCORAI" <sco...@googlegroups.com> 22.01.2023 16:56 >>>

To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/scorai/614c4b8037bb49dd9054ba0d2e08bd92%40mail.ubc.ca.

[Ashley Colby]

To answer Bill in simple terms: yes humans overexploit resources but we are now reaching resource limitations. In the words of John Michael Greer, the smart humans will "collapse now and avoid the rush." The others will be forced to "collapse" into a lower resource environment, and adapt to it or perish. Harsh but true. Ecology isn't driven by human ethics.

To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/scorai/63CD82420200006E003DC371%40gwia1.boku.ac.at.

[Ruben Anderson]

Dear Noel and Joe,

Great conversation. Two very small points to make. 

1. Re Gabor Mate. Yes we are doing the best we can. But! We can also do better he says by changing culture. We can stand and face our personal to cultural traumas and miraculous things can happen

2. The entire world is not imperialist, colonialist or modern so let’s not discount that solutions may come from beyond the not quite all-dominant MTI.

I just read a piece by Rebecca Solnit in The Guardian I really liked. She says ‘despair is a delusion of confidence that asserts it knows what’s coming‘ and ends the piece with ‘we see no farther than the little halo that is cast by our lantern, but we can travel all night by that light’

Cheers

Noel

Dear All

This has been a fascinating conversation. I am left with a couple of questions: 

- there has been much talk (at least as I have understood it) that it’s foolish to believe that technology will provide the answer to climate issues. My question is the opposite: does anyone believe that we can address climate issues WITHOUT technological advances or playing a role? 

- there has also been much talk about the barriers erected by human behaviour and our civilizational culture. Given that one of the issues to be addressed is speed of change before tipping points are reached, does anyone believe that we can fundamentally change human behaviour and our civilisational culture on a global level (even if it’s possible at all) within a time frame that will make a difference to climate change progression? 

Would be grateful for views. 

Best

Joe

Noel, 

1.

To your first point, I would say that culture can change, which is different than saying we can change culture. 

Starting popularly at least with Jimmy Carter’s sweater there have been people trying to change culture around overshoot/climate change. 

But what we see is that the consumption of our culture continues to increase. We even have backlash, with Andrew Tate a recent example, but also with whole subgroups like Rolling Coal.

The United States fought the Civil War, then a century later went through one of the greatest social upheavals in history with the Civil Rights movement and all the related anti-discrimination laws. 

And the Governor of Florida just moved to prevent the teaching of higher level African American history.  

This was one of the most massive culture change efforts in history, and the statistics show it has failed. It is less bad, but nowhere near good. 

Cultures can and do change. But can we direct change in the ways we need? There is very little evidence to support that. 

In general—and this is in itself a thick topic—culture change will come from the system change. I always say, “First you change the behaviour, then the values follow.” In this case, first you change the system, then the culture will follow. 

So the US did not create a culture of what Kunstler calls Happy Motoring. 

No, the US created a massive system of interstate highways, and out of that arose a culture that is auto-centric. 

Yes, there were local driving clubs that lobbied for more roads, better roads, and against jaywalking and other human-centred behaviour. But first they changed the system, and then the culture arose. 

Furthermore, I am closely adjacent to a lot of people working withing Gabor Mates paradigm, and I can tell you it is a lot of work and a lot of attention. Since we do not have lots of spare attention, this has a vanishingly small chance of success. 

2.

Yes, thankfully much of world is not fully lost to MTI society. But when we say solutions may come from other cultures, what do we mean?

The resistance is that we want to keep all THIS. We want our phones and our computers and our cars and our airplane flights and our houses that are never too cold or too warm and our stores stocked with groceries of all kinds, uninterrupted supply of oranges at any time of the year. 

Do we think there is some cultural silver bullet hidden in the Amazon or some other distant place that will allow us to keep all THIS while not being in overshoot? I don’t think so. 

But yes, the solution lies in the rest of the world, and what remains of MTI society will adopt that solution. It is simply to consume less than the planet produces. This means a much simpler, more subsistence life and a much lower global population. The math is very straightforward. 

3.

It is sadly ironic that Solnit talks about delusion, as she is one of the greatest hopium sellers on the progressive side. She wrote a whole book on how people come together in emergencies in order to make fighting climate change seem possible. 

Now, with a real-world experiment with Covid—which is a problem still a thousand times smaller than climate change—she does not seem to have changed her tune. 

She is right, people can and do come together in beautiful ways, as so many of us have through this ongoing pandemic. 

But she has always been wrong about the nature of the problem, and about her understanding of human behaviour. 

Ultimately it comes down to wise ways to spend our remaining time and resources. 

Let’s say you are flying at 30,000 feet and your airplane suffers sudden decompression—you are sucked out of the plane and begin to fall to earth. 

Yes, a small handful of people have survived this great fall. But by far the greatest chance is that you will die. Death is really overwhelmingly likely. 

So sadly, delusion merchants like Solnit keep churning out the rapturous stories of the tiny fraction of people who have survived a deadly fall, encouraging us to sink ever more resources into projects that will fail. In my previous example, we keep building elevators that will become death traps, or perhaps just useless, instead of escalators that will fail usefully. People want to build a global electrical grid when California, one of the richest economies in the world, can’t keep the lights on. 

Maybe this is where I should mention again a post I wrote about baking pie. 

Three things are needed to make change;  we need three capacities. We need the Technical capacity, the Material Capacity, and the Social capacity. Let me explain:

If you have a recipe for apple pie, and some sort of an oven or other way to concentrate heat, you have the technical capacity to bake a pie.

If you have apples and flour and sugar and butter and pinch of cinnamon you have the material capacity to bake a pie.

And if you have someone who is willing to cut butter into flour, slice apples and wait around while the pie bakes, you have the social capacity to bake a pie.

If you lack any one of these three, there will be no pie. Pie will be impossible. You cannot have pie.

Our culture worships The Word. We think all we need is another TED talk. And so people think California can’t keep the lights on due to some technical problem. 

But it is actually a social problem, a cultural problem. We humans with our brains that have evolved to run our bodies and little else, do not have the capacity for this.

Joe,

1.

As Bill said, yes we can address climate change without technological changes. We can all simply return to the subsistence self-provender that most of humanity was engaged in barely over a century ago. 

But that answer isn’t very satisfying because lurking in the question is the desire to maintain all of THIS. Can we continue to go out to restaurants to eat food grown and harvested by someone else, prepared and served by someone else, off plates washed by someone else, with napkins laundered by someone else?

This, times ten thousand different things. 

No, we certainly can’t maintain THIS without some truly Jetsonian technological miracles. 

Since we are falling from a plane with a truly infinitesimal hope for survival, maybe miracles are all we can hope for. 

Personally, I am focussing on laddering up to the subsistence self-provender, and creating social proof so people around me see that it can be a lovely and rich way to live. 

2.

Do I believe we can change behaviour and culture within a time-frame that will prevent serious climate destabilization?

No. I think the chances are so small I feel comfortable saying no chance. 

Again, looking at the pie, we have the technical capacity. We have had the technical capacity for centuries and at least decades. 

The material capacity is a lot more challenging, but the good thing about subsistence self-provender is that you use way less stuff. 

But we do not have the social capacity. 

I saw a tweet last week, that perfectly expresses my experience:

I grew up a collapsenik and always thought that once we hit the jackpot - plagues, fires, floods & other systemic problems we can no longer solve - society would drop the head-in-the-sand attitude. I didn't expect the denial to *increase* as crises become more undeniable.

This is where we are. 

It is not reasonable to look at the last three years and think we are going to deal with climate change.

Why we are there I think lies in discussion of Bill’s thick question. 

Warmly, 

Ruben (not Nelson).

[Noel Gerard Keough]

All good points Ruben,

I only quote Solnit not to agree with everything she writes but those two quotes are worth pondering. Overall I agree she is over-optimistic.

I also find the last page of Mate’s latest Myth of Normal, inspiring. 

I don't know where cultural change will come from outside MTI. Our MTI culture may well wither and die along with hyper-consumption but not all human experience will be lost. If humans survive it may well be a different human cultural experience emerges and becomes more influential. Its just a comment to widen our lens and not think it has to come from us in the hubristic self-centred MTI. For sure there still exists a diversity of human cultural experience that is not planet-destroying.

Noel

On Jan 22, 2023, at 12:52 PM, Ruben Anderson <anderso...@gmail.com> wrote:

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[Rees, William E.]

Actually, Marina, your argument supports mine. 

You say: "...both hierarchical organization and high population growth are matters of particular energy- and socio-political regimes, and not inborn to human nature. For millions of years humans lived as hunter-gatherers with very low population growth and hardly any major social hierachies. Obviously, our nature allowed for this.

I suggest that, like all other species, H. sapiens evolved, in part ,in response to the maximum power imperative -- successful systems (or species) are those that adapt in ways that maximize their appropriation and efficient use of energy from their ecosystems, i.e., they maximise their potential survival and reproduction 

(see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maximum_power_principle ). The evidence suggest that this tendency  is innate.

In short, while our nature as a K-strategic species allows us to live at low levels of extrasomatic energy and thus low population levels, our innate propensity to expand and use available resources is written in our history of developing technologies that increase our energy appropriations (agriculture and especially fossil fuels) and, with this,  both longevity and reproduction. 

This whole process  is supported by your note.  

Of course, with more people and cultural artefacts, we also developed new forms of organizational structure.  However, as for our capacity to deal with complexity, it's all relative.  

Certainly the cognitive development of H. sapiens was "challenged" hundreds and tens of thousands of years ago but for the most part the challenges of living in small tribal groups in a fairly restricted and familiar home range were trivial compared to those we face today.  Back in the day, the assumption of simple cause-effect relationships probably worked most of the time.  Relatively simplistic reductionist thinking was adequate for survival. 

Things have changed radically.  In just the past two hundred years (eight-fold expansion of human numbers; 100-fold expansion of GWP) humans have created a complex global eco-socio-macro-system of overlapping complex sub-systems (the economy, the internet, the military-industrial complex, communications systems, agricultural and mining systems, the climate system, every ecosystem on the planet, etc.) any one of which is beyond complete understanding let alone control of any one person or group of people. 

Modern humans, however, are left with the same brains and cognitive systems as our paleolithic ancestors.  We simply don't 'get' this level of complexity; no one is in charge, no one can be in charge. Further, I submit that no level of human foresight can predict the behaviour of complex systems characterized by lags, thresholds and other manifestations of chaotic behaviour by definition.  

And if  we could, would modern culture respond?  (I gave several theoretical reasons why not, and empirically, we haven't responded to even the climate threat after 50 years of warnings).

In short, cultural evolution has outpaced biological evolution and even the cultural capacity to adapt (we are fractious, argumentative, competitive and mutually suspicious) is severely compromised by other dimensions of human nature/behaviour.  Humans have lost control of a macro-systemic environment of their own making and the present form of civilization may be 'selected out' as a result.  

Bill

---

From: Ashley Colby <ash...@rizomafieldschool.com>
Sent: Sunday, January 22, 2023 11:27:34 AM
To: marina.fisc...@boku.ac.at
Cc: Ruben Anderson; Ashwani Vasishth; SCORAI Group; Rees, William E.
Subject: Re: Re: [SCORAI] Renewables Projected to Soon Be One-Fourth of US Electricity Generation. Really Soon

 

[Noel Gerard Keough]

Continuing to enjoy this discussion. 

Bill, what in your opinion should we (do you) do in the face of your analysis (which I am on-board with)

I am pessimistic but remain committed to doing something. But it is hard to figure out what that should be?

Run for election?

Just model anti-consumption and live a one-planet life? 

Educate about our biophysical reality?

Support people healing from trauma so they are able to focus on our common existential threat? 

Just watch the show as our innate nature brings our species or at least MTI crashing down?

Civil disobedience?

I will probably not see the worst of what is to come but I have a child.

Noel

On Jan 22, 2023, at 1:15 PM, 'Rees, William E.' via SCORAI <sco...@googlegroups.com> wrote:

[△EXTERNAL]

• Even ordinary citizens are reluctant to sacrifice their comfortable lifestyles for the general welfare of humankind, present or future.Economists recognize this as a variation on the ‘public good/free rider problem.’ “Why should I give up my vacation house and automobile to reduce my carbon footprint for the public good, particularly if few others do?  I would be making a significant sacrifice in exchange for an infinitesimal share of the benefits. Meanwhile, other people would get a free ride on my ‘gift’ to the public.”

To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/scorai/8c3f171d4b5d453f87a0eb277aca0ae9%40mail.ubc.ca.

[Ashwani Vasishth]

Dear Bill, and others,

Okay, say it is so.  Collapse--in some unknowable form and to some unknowable extent, appears inevitable.

I really liked Ruben Nelson's response as well.  I truly did. 

BUT.  I am not persuaded that any of this tells ME (forget everyone else--all my students), as thinking volitional entities, what my options for action are.  What should I do?

I'll gladly and unhesitatingly concede that my understanding is at least sub-par.  But tell me.  What do you expect from me as a response to your likely on-point analysis?  What would I need to do next, for you to accept that I havem indeed accepted your analysis?

If I am NOT willing to "fold my hands and wait," If I believe that the past is not NECESSARILY and inevitably a reliable predictor of the future, if I genuinely believe that evolutionary processes are supra-systemic to human civilizzation, and do not grind to a halt because we have been incredibly--well--ineffective, and if we can somehow stop ourselves from EXPECTING this or that of our future....what ought I to do?

-- 

     Ashwani
        Vasishth         vasi...@ramapo.edu          (201) 684-6616 (Jabber-enabled)
                   http://phobos.ramapo.edu/~vasishth
          --------------------------------------------------------
                      Professor of Sustainability
                  Convener, Sustainability Program (BA)
              Convenor, Environmental Studies Program (BA)
                    Director, Center for Sustainability
                      http://ramapo.edu/ramapo-green
                     http://ramapo.edu/sustainability

You can ALWAYS set up an Appointment with me, without negotiation, seven days a week,
              at: https://calendly.com/vasishth/webex-meeting

                       Ramapo College of New Jersey
              505 Ramapo Valley Road, SSHS, Mahwah, NJ 07430
         --------------------------------------------------------

I respectfully acknowledge that Ramapo College is located on the ancestral and traditional Indigenous territory of the Ramapough Lenape Nation.

[Noel Gerard Keough]

Here’s one immediate option for action from my friends with BC Alberta Social Economy Research Alliance

Starts this week. Free.

Noel

On Jan 22, 2023, at 1:39 PM, Ashwani Vasishth <ashwani....@gmail.com> wrote:

[△EXTERNAL]

[iv] See M. Pratarelli, Myopic man: On the nature and universality of human self-deception and its long-term effects on our environment(Medici Publishing, 2008). 

To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/scorai/36bd2f31-2d48-ac15-4dca-5eb3148b5360%40gmail.com.

[Ruben Anderson]

Dear Bill, I so wish we were sharing some of my homemade cider in my currently sunny backyard, looking at my rain-soaked garden as we had this conversation. 

1.

First, let me say why I think we are here. We are simply animals, like any other animal on the planet, so I completely agree with

Humans, like all other species, are capable of exponential population growth and tend to use accessible food and other resources as soon as possible.

This partly responds to Marina, who said she was critiquing, but who I think was really pointing out how serendipitous human access to “accessible food and other resources” has been. 

I think it is three things: opposable thumbs, slightly larger brains, and fossil fuels. 

Without all of those three things we would not be here. 

There are larger brains, like in whales, without thumbs or access to fossil fuels. 

There is access to fossil fuels, like rats living in coal seams, without thumbs or larger brains.

And there are thumbs, like the great apes, or maybe even raccoons, without larger brains or access to fossil fuels. 

Whales, with their giant brains, have been gliding the world’s oceans for 50 million years. Who know what philosophy they have developed. Higher maths—maths beyond our ability to even imagine? 

But they don’t have thumbs, or fossil fuels. 

Serendipity brought this all together in humans, and as you say, any creature that has access to the resources to sustain life will enjoy them unitl external limits intervene. 

2.

So why so little progress?

As I have said, we have very limited cognitive capacity. 

And it is my friend Sylvia Coleman, who did her PhD with John Robinson at CIRS, who said that our brains have evolved to run our bodies and not much else. 

We developed a bunch of energy conservation methods so that we could get more done with our limited cognitive capacity. Most of the psychological research is actually studying rules of thumb developed to conserve our cognitive capacity. 

So, if it worked in the past, it will probably continue to work in the future. 

If other people are doing it, it is probably safe for me to do it too.

I think these basic heuristics are very, very old, and are ingrained very deep. These are not biases, as psychology would frame it, but more like a dimmer switch for our brain glucose that allows us to make decisions very economically. 

The “novelty bias” is us scanning a grassy plain for disruptions in the pattern that might signal a predator heading our way. 

So humans are not myopic.

I guess I get what you are saying, I just don’t like the framing. 

The eagle can soar for hours on the wind, we don’t mock it for not being able to dive deep like a dolphin. 

The bear can store enough fat to hibernate for months, we don’t mock it for not being able to jump as nimbly as a frog. 

So humans aren’t myopic, we just evolved scanning grasslands for small changes in the pattern, and we do that extraordinarily well.

We discard 99.999% of the information we sense (ask me for the actual number and source if you are interested). We could not possible function if we didn’t. That is all our brain can do. We have evolved algorithms to do that filtering automatically. But what we retain is the tiny disruptions in the pattern that might be a sabre-tooth tigre. 

And so I would love to hear how you feel about a small change:

H. sapiens evolved under relatively simple, more or less predictable environments

What if we think about as we evolved under simple, but UNpredictable environments?

Simple. Water, food, shelter, predators. 

But all of those things can be capricious. Predators have explicitly evolved to be unpredictable. 

Our nervous system is high-strung. We hate loss more than we like gain. We are jacked up on novelty. 

I think unpredictability may be the crux there. 

But animals like us are not content to stand and chew our cud. We like to run and play and roll on the grass. 

Humans have figured out lots of ways to increase what we are able to do with our limited cognitive capacity. These are kind of like prosthetics for our brains. 

These are things like: language, religion, books, math, illustration. 

With these tools we could outsource cognitive capacity on a very large scale: governance, agriculture, engineering, medicine. We no longer had to know everything, we could outsource. 

Now we outsource on a massive scale, such that many of us would have no real idea how things work. I understand that computers run on “chips” and those chips have billions of “switches” that can be 1 or 0. But I, who have a degree in Industrial Design, have absolutely zero idea how to build a computer even at the level of ENIAC. 

We outsource something to them, and they outsource to us. 

As Tainter shows, increases in complexity eventually face diminishing, and even negative returns. 

The agency capture you mention is a negative return. 

As Bardi describes the Seneca Cliff, the road to growth is slow, but ruin is rapid. We do not have the capacity to figure out what to do about our disconnected experts. We have outsourced responsibility to them, and now we can’t unscramble the omelette. 

So, I don’t think it is that humans are predisposed to give away our agency. It is just that we have evolved for little more than scanning the grasslands. We developed highly complex ways to outsource cognitive capacity to other people, and we properly trust those people. The last thing we need is a bridge designed by committee. 

But here we are where the experts have also lost sight of the big picture. They also outsource, and complexity is biting us all. 

So, to your last points, and then I need to get out and do some of the self-provender work.

Why the public good/free rider problem? 

I say it is an adaptation to our limited cognitive capacity. It seems very closely related to “If other people are doing it and surviving it is probably safe for me to do it”.

But maybe it is deeper in our DNA. Maybe it is just a basic urge at the organism level to not let another organism sequester more resources, giving them reproductive advantage. 

Regardless, it is not because people are bad or selfish, it is just that is what humans are, with our own distinctiveness, like the eagle or the bear. 

As far as habits…

Habits are just tools to conserve cognitive capacity. 

Habits are rarely and difficultly built consciously. Mostly habits are created by repeated behaviour. You do not consciously care which faucet the hot water comes out of, but if you use a bathroom that has the faucets reversed, you will see how strong your habit is. You spent zero conscious effort on this habit, but it lives in your body. 

That is how most of our habits are. They have simply arisen from the physical world we live in. Unfortunately that physical world is deeply in overshoot. 

The main flow chart in this report was taped to my wall for many years. I went on to contextualize habit a lot, but yes, it is strong, and is very energy-intensive to change. 

https://socialpolicy.crawford.anu.edu.au/sparc/pdf/2010/SMF_Creatures_of_Habit.pdf

Building habits consciously is extremely costly, in every way, but I mean of cognitive capacity. This is another reason why we must change the physical system, because then people will build new habits that work with system. 

We build wide straight roads, and people properly drive fast on them. Then we get mad at them for driving fast, and try to make them pay attention to the speed limit. 

It is idiotic, and is a failure. If you want people to drive slowly, build narrow, windy roads, and they will drive slowly. 

You change the system and you change behaviour. You change behaviour and you change the values/story. 

Of course, it is very hard to change the system, and so I think nomadic herding is going to be a real growth industry. 

That is a lot of words Bill. I hope there is something useful in there. 

I guess the tl;dr is that I think a lot of what we call human nature is a second order effect of our limited cognitive capacity, and most of the things do to try to “fix” those problems ignore the underlying reality of our limited capacity—and so they fail.

That is a whole other bottle of cider, talking about Descartes, and our cultural worship of The Word. 

If you don’t have someone to slice apples, you are not going to eat pie. 

I’ll lift a glass to you today, 

Ruben (not Nelson)

[Ruben Anderson]

Dear Ashwani and Noel—

And to everybody else in SCORAI, I apologize—you have been hearing a lot from me today. This topic is really what I have been thinking about and working on in both a professional and personal capacity for over twenty years, and I have a lot to say. 

Ashwani, I hear today and I have heard in that past that you have a great care for your students. 

I imagine that you might feel responsibility. You are a teacher, at the head of the class, giving them information and ideas that will shape their future. 

If you don’t feel responsible, and I bet you do, I am sure at the very least you don’t want to give them bullshit. 

So, I really hear your concern, and I have heard that from you for long enough that I bet you also feel real warmth, and maybe love for your students. I bet they are great. I bet they have lots of energy and really care about making the world a better place. 

So, I think what I am hearing from you is that you really care about these kids, and feel a responsibility to give them what they need for the future they face. 

Noel mentioned he has a child, so I imagine there are very similar feelings there. 

And yes, all of the trends are looking very bad. We are in for a lot of change in our lifetimes and certainly within the lifetimes of people younger than us. 

I remember running into Bill Rees at a green building cocktail party nearly twenty years ago, and he very much rattled me by saying, “I thought I was old enough to miss the big impacts of climate change, but now I know they will happen in my lifetime.” That was a cold splash of water. 

The trends are bad, and none of the tools we used on the upslope are helping us now that we are in collapse. Anybody who can stand to do the math sees some very harrowing times in our future. 

Our economic models don’t work, our political systems don’t function. As Bill just said, “no one is in charge, no one can be in charge.”

My particular area of interest, as I have been detailing today, is WHY no one can be in charge.

So, what then shall we do? How shall we live?

Following the basic math we can see that we are going to be living a much small life, and that more and more people will need to do more and more for themselves. Can you see a social system that is not fraying or in early collapse?

So, I say do anything that develops a sense of capacity to do things. If you learn to sew, learn to cook, learn to garden, learn to brew beer, learn to weld, bake bread, make pasta… anything. Do anything, because when you know you can do something, it is easier to learn to do more. 

We must fight the creeping uselessness. Become capable. 

Obviously subsistence is important. Ashley quoted Greer—“Collapse now and avoid the rush.” So shorten the supply chains on your food. Learn the peasant foods of your ancestors and learn how to cook them in the bioregion you live in. 

But the bullets and bunker approach has real limits. Nobody would be in SCORAI if they were only inward looking. This group is community-minded. 

As I said, my top three are walkable communities, well-insulated homes, and local food. 

So Noel gave the list:

Run for election?

Just model anti-consumption and live a one-planet life? 

Educate about our biophysical reality?

Support people healing from trauma so they are able to focus on our common existential threat? 

Just watch the show as our innate nature brings our species or at least MTI crashing down?

Civil disobedience?

And I would say do any of that. 

If politics is your jam, then run for office. Don’t be silly and think you are going to stop the crash but real work can and should be done by politicians. If you can change zoning laws to eliminate residential-only zones, which would allow in corner stores and small business in every block. Every infrastructure system needs to be simplified. 

Yes, model one-planet living. So much of human behaviour comes from copying. It is cognitively low-energy to copy what other people do, so provide lots of social proof. I grow my tomatoes in the front yard, beside the sidewalk. 

Etc. Etc. 

If you do accept the depth and gravity of this time we live in, then just grab on to any part of that. The hopeheads worry we will throw our hands up in despair, but really we are working much harder than they are, just on things that don’t align with the everglowing Jetsons future. 

Ashwani, you have a special power. 

Remember that we have low cognitive capacity, and that first we change the system, then we change behaviour, then values and narratives change to match. 

So, just assign system and behaviour change as homework. Don’t try to persuade them, everybody knows this stuff. Just make it required in your coursework. 

I co-taught a course called Ecological Perspectives on Design, which was required for every second year student. 

I think the first class we assigned that they stop using bottled water, and the second class that they stop using all disposable foodware, including coffee cups. We told them if they brought a paper cup to class they would be told to just get up and leave. We assigned a 100 Mile Meal. We assigned that they needed to fix something. We assigned changing lightbulbs… all of the little stuff that we all should have done in the 90s we just made homework. Don’t try to justify and persuade. You control this little mini-system, so just change it. We assigned that they switch to recycled toilet paper. 

And every class we assigned a group to bring food in for the whole class, so we all would sit and eat together with food made by our classmates. 

And we assigned political engagement, with a defined structure. 

First they make the personal change, like not using paper coffee cups. 

Then they write their politician to ask for system change, to shift away for cognitive-demanding personal behaviour. So ask the politician to support banning paper cups and replacing them with deposit systems for reusable cups. 

Years later I would run into people who had been students, and who told me they were still doing the homework we had assigned. We simply switched a leverage point, and changed their behaviour. 

I will say, this class was emotional. It was very difficult to deal with the existential crisis, and the conflict between the mainstream narrative and the conclusions we can draw by looking plainly at reality. There were tears. 

But there will be tears either way. It would nice if they were not tears of anger because we lied to them like everybody else does. 

You may not be able to completely reset their worldview, and free them from the mainstream narrative. But you can build in them a feeling of capability. You can push back against the expectation of uselessness.

Lastly, maybe more for Noel with a child than for class, we need grief work. The stories we know are dying, and it is very hard. It is harder than losing a family member. 

So build grief literacy, share tears, and develop ritual containers for grief.

There are going to be more tears than we can imagine in the future, and it takes practice to grieve and keep moving. 

With love, 

Ruben.

 

[Noel Gerard Keough]

Thanks for the thoughtful note Ruben.

 I’m on the same page. We do have learn useful  skills, self or local reliance, hot build community,  how to get around under our own steam feed ourselves and stay warm in cold climates!! Good advice

Noel

Sent from my iPhone

On Jan 22, 2023, at 3:19 PM, Ruben Anderson <anderso...@gmail.com> wrote:



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[Tom Abeles]

hi ashwani

I would go to the wellbeing economy website and join the various active groups. Particularly, go to: https://weall.org/hubs, download the hub guide and start a New Jersey Hub with your students and others and then develop a program to involve NJ gov't like the 6 countries, https://weall.org/wego

I would suggest also going to the DEAL, Doughnut Economics Action Lab. They now have a business guide and other support

between the two you have a full academic program, an action plan that involves students and others with an effort to effect policy changes within government and business. It also points to where your students might find a career direction. 

tomA

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[Stephens, Jennie]

Dear SCORAI Colleagues, 

See below details of an online & in-person public lecture I’ll be giving at Trinity College Dublin, Ireland, Geography Department on “Climate Justice and the Role of Universities in Transformative Change” where I will present a vision of a paradigm-shift in higher education toward facilitating structural, systemic social change.   Both in-person and online registration is here.  The online lecture will start at 6:25pm Irish time / 1:25pm EST.  

All welcome – feel free to share with students and other colleagues who might be interested.

Thanks!

Jennie

 

-------------------------------------

Trinity College Dublin, Inaugural Geography Annual Lecture 

We are honoured that our first speaker in this new lecture series will be Professor Jennie C. Stephens, Dean’s Professor of Sustainability Science and Policy at Northeastern University.

 

Wednesday 15 February, 2023 

18:00-19:30 

Haughton Lecture Theatre, The Museum Building and ONLINE 

Climate Justice and the Role of Universities in Transformative Change 

Transformative social change is needed to address the climate crisis which is exacerbating other crises and worsening social injustices, economic inequities, and health disparities within local communities and around the world.  During this time of growing instability and human suffering, this lecture proposes that we collectively reimagine the role of universities advancing climate justice and promoting societal transformation toward a more just, healthy, and stable future. A commitment to climate justice provides a helpful framework for colleges and universities to leverage their unique position in society and align their many initiatives to contribute to transformative change for the public good.   

 

More information and registration for both in-person and online registration is available via the link below.   tcd-geo2023.eventbrite.ie

 

This is an evening event and light refreshments will be served ahead of the lecture and it will be followed by a wine reception, all in the Museum Building. 

We look forward to seeing you there and to welcoming Professor Stephens to launch this new initiative for Trinity Geography.  If you have any queries please contact Rory Rowan at ROW...@tcd.ie directly.

 

 

Jennie C. Stephens, PhD  (she/her)

Dean’s Professor of Sustainability Science & Policy

Northeastern University, School of Public Policy & Urban Affairs, Boston, MA USA

jenniecstephens.com    @jenniecstephens (twitter)  

 

Recent Publications

Higher Education Needs a New Mission. How about Climate Justice?  Boston Globe. 2022

Beyond Climate Isolationism: A Necessary Shift For Climate Justice. Current Climate Change Reports. 2022

Action Research for Energy Transformation, Educational Action Reesarch. 2022

Climate policy conflict in the U.S. states: a critical review and way forward. Climatic Change, 2022

Feminist, Antiracist Values for Climate Justice: Moving Beyond Climate Isolationism. Sacred Civics: Building Seven Generation Cities. 2022

Green New Deal Proposals: Comparing emerging transformational climate policies. Energy Research & Social Science, 2021

 

Book

Diversifying Power: Why We Need Antiracist, Feminist Leadership on Climate and Energy, Island Press, 2020

[dvskasper]

Lots of good stuff here. 

There are some details I could quibble with, but they seem far less important than highlighting an important point of convergence.

From Ruben (not Nelson):  “first we change the system, then we change behaviour, then values and narratives change to match.”

While I don’t think it is necessarily this linear (i.e., it is somewhat more iterative—as Ruben himself highlights in advocating skill- and capacity-building, a kind of behavior change that precedes larger system and values changes), I’m generally down with this logic. And the basic idea is helpfully applicable at near and far time scales.

One problem is that: in general, we don’t understand “the system” or systems we’re a part of very well. 

This poses big challenges for efforts to deliberately change those systems. Building capacity to see and understand our systems better is one (of several) of my interests and a key focus in my work.

I celebrate all of the diverse experience and expertise out there! And I can’t help but think that—with some firmer common ground of shared understanding—it might be possible to put our respective knowledge and skills to more effective use together. 

Debbie

[Dimitris Stevis]

Bill and all:

 

I for one agree with Marina and think that your reading of her comments misses her focus on ecosocial history and power (and hopefully I am not missing her point, also). I think that Marina provides an alternative way of looking at these problems that is worth engaging in its own terms.

 

Dimitris

To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/scorai/8c3f171d4b5d453f87a0eb277aca0ae9%40mail.ubc.ca.

[Tom Bowerman]

Scorai-ers,

I also will challenge some Bill's assertions even though I agree with him on many points.  I agree with Bill that we are in severe overshoot.  I also agree that high overshoot contributors like the USA should reduce affluent consumption by at least 75-80% .  Bill does not see much path for technological or behavioral solutions, in doing so, he seems to arrive at a single outcome, complete catastrophe for life on earth. Case closed?     

Coincidently I listened to a two hour Nate Hagens interviewing Bill Rees  titled The Fundamental Issue - Overshoot ( https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LQTuDttP2Yg). Therein the same diagnosis and prediction was made, we could reduce consumption but we won't, and the renewable technology path we're pursuing makes thing worse. Really?  While not the only technology in the queue, what about small modular reactor (SMR) nuclear power?  Three days ago the Nuclear Regulatory Commission announced that NuScale Power received a license for the first SMR for US domestic consumption. Small nuclear reactors have been operating for more than 70 years on ships, and the large aircraft carriers carry four reactors generating electricity to support a community of 2700 people, propel the ship at 35 knots, and go for 30 years on a single fueling. Currently there are 185 ships powered with some version of SMR reactors.  Small modular reactors are projected to be less expensive than conventionals, zero meltdown risk, less dependent on long distant transmission, safer overall, and perhaps capable of recycling existing spent fuels in a manner to reduce radioactivity by 90%.  The United Nations Life Cycle Assessment of Electricity Generation Options 2021 is a credible document to compare our range of energy options for the future. 

I am not a salesman for nuclear power, rather I advocate for open-mindedness in this time of crisis.  Unquestionably, nuclear deserves a high degree of skepticism. As Bill has repeatedly points out, so does solar, wind and rare metal energy storage devices. If the UN report cited just above, nuclear may be one of the least environmentally impactful energy sources after lower consumption behavior.  Our first choice of action should conservation and lowering consumption, for lots of reasons.

Sometime I would like to offer more about my ongoing verifiable life-style of  zero carbon emissions. But until all of us on this SCORAI listserve are ready to practice a 1-2 ton emission per capita lifestyle, perhaps a more open mind toward technology is called for? 

The topic of exemplifying sustainable behavior seems to fall on deaf eyes with this group! It's still a worthy group nonetheless.

Tom Bowerman, Policy Interactive Research

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[Tom Abeles]

From Tom Bowerman's post:

Therein the same diagnosis and prediction was made, we could reduce consumption but we won't, and the renewable technology path we're pursuing makes thing worse.

Ashwani has said the similar regarding individual's willingness to give up their consumptive lifestyle, particularly the broad middle class in developed countries.

If one plots energy or global footprint as examples against the HDI country rankings we find that the top countries in the HDI have excessive consumption needed to be in that rank. That says that we are prolifically profligate in our resource consumption

Also, with the evolution of Raworth's DEAL and the Wellbeing Economic Alliance there are multiple paths for academia to take theory to practice, as well as for those parties in business and the public sector.

tomA

[Ruben Anderson]

Dear Ashwani and Noel, again…

I closed this note talking about grief work. But, my wife is a somatic trauma recovery practitioner, and she put it in a much more lovely way. 

So, let’s take as a given that things are going poorly. Looking around us—this is what collapse looks like. 

We can lead with grief and death literacy, we need to learn how to somatically metabolize dread and fear.

But then we need to mature our manner of approach to include responding with curiosity, desire, pleasure, meaningfulness; we must learn to rest in states of well-being and explore responses based in appreciation of quality, and craft, integrity, leadership and enoughness.

We may not die of natural causes, and we may live the rest of our days in ever more precarious times, but how we choose to live in those times remains up to us. 

Of course this is the nature of living, for we all will die. These are lessons of all the old sages of how to live well—it is just that we are living in a pressure cooker with the heat rising. But still, the work remains the same. 

This is a very different focus than one of optimizing policies in a losing battle. It is the practice of living and dying well. 

With love, 

Ruben. 

[dvskasper]

“It is the practice of living and dying well.”

100% agreed. Whatever else we might do about the circumstances we find ourselves in, this is the core.

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[Jean Boucher]

I've not been completely following this epic thread but 'living and dying well,' while sounding lovely, is pretty vague and imbued with multi-level social constructs of class, culture, generation, species, etc.

Fun fun!

Jean

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[Philip Vergragt]

Dimitris, Bill, Marina,

Marina, thank you for putting this fresh air into this discussion. I totally agree with you and Dimitris that we need to keep focused on specific power relationships.

Quoting you: “….but it is a matter of social power struggles and our socio-political organization - not of our biological nature.”

We cannot change our biological nature; but we need to continue to be engaged in the ongoing power struggles: globally, regionally, and locally.

I personally get a lot of inspiration working on the local level. Not that change comes easily; but everywhere there are people of good will; and willing to help change (little parts of) the system.

We cannot know the outcome; but we should keep trying to do the right thing; wherever and whenever possible.

Philip

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[Rees, William E.]

Hello again, Ruben (not Nelson) --

What can I say?  (or add).  Wonderful!

I much appreciate your thoughtful and exquisitely nuanced response to my query.  Which is not to say that we couldn't quibble about some nuances over several bottles of cider.  For example, you say: 

"So humans aren’t myopic, we just evolved scanning grasslands for small changes in the pattern, and we do that extraordinarily well.  We discard 99.999% of the information...." 

But I would argue that scanning for small changes only and discarding 99.999% of other information is a good 'first cut'  description of a major condition for myopia.  

I obviously agree that "we have very limited cognitive capacity"  and that this is "all our brains can do" but I don't for a second consider acknowledging this as "mocking" human beings. It is simply a fact of our evolutionary heritage which offers some explanation for our failure to use one of the truly unique qualities of humans the capacity to plan ahead, to alter our future.  (Ironically we actually do exercise this ability quite well when the benefits  are obvious, but when our "scanning" the future  plain reveals unpleasantries, we "deny, discredit, reinterpret, or forget that information".  Perhaps this means our myopia is, to a degree, selective.)

You  would also nudge my assertion that "H. sapiens evolved under relatively simple, more or less predictable environments" into a seemingly contrary variant, "we evolved under simple, but UNpredictable environments" on grounds that, for example, our "predators evolved to be unpredictable".  

Quite right, of course, but here I would protest that we are quibbling over degree. First, the probable presence  of predators was predictable; the danger was known if not specifiable as to time and place.  Second,  I deliberately use the term "relatively" compared to  the present day.  So the predictability of paleolithic environments still seems to me somewhat more that the predictability of today's environment, a mega-complex system of overlapping complex subsystems (everything from the internet to the military industrial complex, the global economy, climate system and the biosphere. No  person or institution can get a controlling handle on any single subsystem (and that cannot end well).

I will refrain from additional quibbles since they mainly make the point that our differences are more defined by semantics than real disagreement. 

Again, your care and attention to detail are grand.

Not to mention your "lifting a glass."

With love too.

Bill

 

Bright ideas for salvation with almost no possibility of realization are always more attractive than the darkening realities actually unfolding around us.  It's the human way. 

---

From: Ruben Anderson <anderso...@gmail.com>
Sent: Sunday, January 22, 2023 1:00:23 PM
To: sco...@googlegroups.com
Cc: Rees, William E.

Subject: Re: [SCORAI] Renewables Projected to Soon Be One-Fourth of US Electricity Generation. Really Soon

 

[CAUTION: Non-UBC Email]

But all of those things can be capricious. we evolved under simple, but UNpredictable environments. 

[Ruben Nelson]

Hi Bill and Ruben A,

 

Thank you both for such a rich conversation.  You have offered a lot to chew on and to be fed by.  If I could I, too, would sit with you and sip some cider.  You could call me “Butch”, my family nick name, so as not to confuse the issue of which Ruben is speaking.

 

And it seems to me that you have offered a clear demonstration of how we who were formed by  and within MTI cultures unconsciously accept the MTI “take” on reality as THE right, good and sound way to frame the human experience of reality. 

 

It is this point that I want to explore.  If the MTI assumption is sound, then we are good to go.  However, if it is faulty, then we need to identify times we have made an assumption that we now find to be faulty.  You can surmise that by raising this issue that I am among those who find the MTI presupposition about the fundamental adequacy of its own ways of knowing to be wrong-headed and dangerous.  Yes, I want to suggest that a truly fundamental issue of our time is our need as MTI peoples in MTI cultures to come to recognize the ways in which our MTI ways of grasping and construing reality are and are not adequate to the work we face in the 21^st Century.

 

The point I wish to make is both simple and contentious, at least if viewed within widest/deepest/most integral MTI frame of reference.  It is simply that our MTI ways of becoming, being and living, including the sense we make of the bio-physical world, are only one of the three major ways we homo sapiens have developed to date of presenting ourselves to, grasping and “taking/construing” the vast reality of which we are a part.  I acknowledge that for this statement to be taken seriously it implies that, writ large, the reality of which we are a part must be inherently ambiguous enough that it can be “taken/construed” in quite different ways; ways that are different enough to make significant differences.   What is more, it implies that there is enough supportive evidence for each of the ways of construing reality, that under particular conditions, each appears to make enough sense of the vast bulk of the available data that it is safe and even wise to commit to that way of experiencing reality.

 

I have attached a couple of diagrams of how I think about these things.  I do so in a “causal layered” manner.  You will see that I agree with Ruben A. when he said that:  “You change the system and you change behaviour. You change behaviour and you change the values/story.”  I note that ‘system’ refers to the physical arrangement of things.  Marx understood that most human learning occurs by the processes sociologists now call “socialization.”  When we learn by doing we are not only learning what to do with our hands and our mouths, but with our minds and our imaginations.  I assume on this we agree. 

 

My disagreement is on three points:

1.      There is a fourth layer which Ruben A’s comment does not refer to.  It is the layer of our most fundamental ontological and epistemological presuppositions.  This layer is critical.  At this level we find answers to such questions as:  What is the nature of reality?  What is the nature of human beings/persons?  What is the relationship of reality to human beings?  In what ways can we grasp reality and in what ways can reality grasp us?  It is differences at this level that enable us to distinguish the various forms of civilization from each other.  If the differences are as important as I see them to be, then it must be the case that both reality and human experience is “plastic” enough to be “taken/construed” in ways that are different enough that the differences matter.  (Pun intended.)  If this is the case, then we must learn to distinguish among both the various forms of civilization that have emerged to date in human history and the cultures which exemplify each of these forms. 

 

2.      We can conclude from the above that human forms of civilization and the cultures which exemplify them matter far more than we in MTI cultures understand.  This means that any sweeping understanding of human history must include the emergence of the forms of civilization by and through which we have lived as a species.  This means that the MTI bias to ignore our evolution as civilizational and cultural species by privileging our biophysical development is no longer adequate.  Yes, we are biophysical beings.  And yes, many living species have some capacity to develop and live by their cultures.  And we appear to be immersed in cultures to degrees that no other living species is.  The human story is inherently time-bound and cultural, even the sweeping story of our development.  We must learn to tell it how it has been and is.

 

3.      Human learning is bi-directional.  It moves not only from physical substances to thinking, imagination and O/E presuppositions.  It runs from insights that burst our O/E presuppositions to our imagination to our manner of thinking and then what we physically do.  Such insights re-orient our lives and practices.  They are the great insights of science, psychology and spirituality.  The insights which alter the trajectory of human history.    

 

When these things are understood they illuminate our history, our present condition and our future in ways that include, but move beyond the implicit behaviourism of our MTI cultures.

 

In short, it is the case, as Bill has so clearly explored, that we are in bio-physical overshoot and that this alone can do us in.  My point is that in order to make enough sense of this fact, we must also understand that we are in civilizational overshoot.  Otherwise, we will continue to try to extricate ourselves from the mess of living complex messes we are in by using the very means of grasping and manipulating reality that has brought us here in the first place.

 

Ruben

 

Ruben F.W. Nelson

Executive Director

Foresight Canada

www.foresightcanada.com

+1-403-609-1016

Courageous Leadership for Transforming Change

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[Rees, William E.]

Noel --

Individual action, while it might make you feel better, is not going to make much difference and, since it suffers from the public good/free rider problem (see the fifth bullet in my list) there are more free riders than those willing to contribute to the public good. 

Education of the truly ignorant is important, but we do not have an information deficit on this issue in the context of policy development.   

Overshoot (a fatal form of unsustainability) is a collective problem requiring collective solutions.  At present, this mostly comes from government intervention in the economy on behalf of the common good.  Only governments can implement the policies capable of the needed heavy lifting --  they should reserve FF for essential uses; establish quotas/rationing of any remaining fossil fuel  budget (some say there is none); implement carbon taxes and other eco-taxes to move us closer to full social cost pricing; phase out private automobiles (including EVs which, all in, are as eco-damaging as ICE vehicles); massive investment in public transit, etc. 

In this light, seems to me that harassing governments, including street protests and civil disobedience, crashing all-candidate meetings with lots of questions  and supporters, writing frequent letters, is the best thing to do to get politicians to notice there are more citizen voters than corporate voters.  If this is not successful then "just watch the show as our innate nature brings our species or at least MTI crashing down."

Bill

---

From: Noel Gerard Keough <nke...@ucalgary.ca>
Sent: Sunday, January 22, 2023 12:33:18 PM
To: Rees, William E.
Cc: Ashley Colby; marina.fisc...@boku.ac.at; Ruben Anderson; Ashwani Vasishth; SCORAI Group

[Ruben Anderson]

Thank you for this Bill. 

Yes, we have arguments made for cider—arguments really designed to make you thirsty but not angry. So, not out of disagreement, but to explain my semantics a bit…

There is a lot of misanthropy in the collapsosphere, of the humans are a virus or humans are a cancer variety. Cancer especially has the tones of something malevolent, something broken, something without conscience.

We agree that we are merely animals with an evolutionary roll of the dice that landed us here, and that other animals with brains/thumbs/fossil fuels would likely have done the same thing. 

There is also a lot of misanthropy in the judeo-christian worldview. We arose from original sin and we are all sinners etc., and it is hard to find contemplation of our situation without one or both of these flavours. It seems that human nature is only brought up in the negative, which is not how we talk about any other creature, nor (probably) how any other creature thinks of itself. 

And so I always try to reframe. Humans are amazing and beautiful. We are very capable and have done great things. It is very hard, since I was born in this culture too, but I try. 

And so that is why I chafe at words like myopia—nobody ever says, “Oh, you are so lucky to be myopic!” We don’t have any other opinions about how creatures see—bees see ultraviolet, the vision of housecats is tuned to see mouse-sized things moving in dim light and we don’t tsk-tsk them. But for ourselves we speak of it as a shame. 

It is just what we are, and I wished we loved ourselves more. 

Of course with you there is no need for me to have such a hair trigger. Though maybe some of the folks following along at home will find a useful point of view in “part of nature, doing the best we can”.

After your more recent response to Noel, I realized that one of my main organizing principles may help explain my suggestions. 

I don’t think we are going to save this civilization in any of the ways people usually use the word “save". But nor do I think humans will go extinct as the Near Term Human Extinctionist and many other Doomers worry about. 

Humans are a weed species, like rats and deer and crows, and I think some small number of us will walk on some part of this planet for a very long time. I am not joking when I say nomadic herding will be a growth industry. 

But the “rapid simplification”, as Tainter defines collapse, is going to very unpleasant indeed. It is going to take many, many generations before we are truly “post-collapse”. 

And so my rubric is to try to imagine what the humans of 200 years from now will need, and to do my part to conserve and transmit *that*.

This is a very different list of stuff than you would find from the IPCC or whatever—very few organizations actually act like collapse is happening. 

If you ever have occasion to visit the Island, I will have a case of cider on ice. 

Ruben (not Nelson)

[Noel Gerard Keough]

Thanks Bill

Sensible options. I’ve been  contributing to/doing most of this to greater or lesser extent as have many on this conversation I expect. Sadly with little discernable impact. Or more accurately with impact but woefully inadequate for the challenge we face. 

But the world is complex we can never be certain how things will turn. So we carry on

Cheers

Noel

Sent from my iPhone

On Jan 23, 2023, at 7:33 PM, Rees, William E. <wr...@mail.ubc.ca> wrote:



[△EXTERNAL]

[Tom Abeles]

hi Noel

I agree with Bill

the change has to occur at the government, and, also, at the financial sectors ,where the ability, the fiscal and motivational resources are accessible.

As Bill notes, the internet is awash in the data that has been generated along with the arguments

As i have stated, based on exchanges with others, the theory and practice communities seldom cross lines. The recent work from Raworth's DEAL and the emergent community from the Wellbeing Economic Alliance's points to a bridge between the two. The 5, now 6 countries as members of the Wellbeing Economy Government Partnership as well as others that are paralleling the efforts is a start for an organization that has less than 5 years into a dive in the efforts.

It is too early to know the impact of the 10 million usd effort around the issues of degrowth will manifest

Theory to practice. As Bill notes the "Thunbergs" have had their time on the stage, largely demanding more than blah, blah, blah from paralyzed international meetings

To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/scorai/B5DCF864-6F09-4788-A628-F099CFB8B4CA%40ucalgary.ca.

[Ashley Colby]

"try to imagine what the humans of 200 years from now will need, and to do my part to conserve and transmit *that*."

Well said Ruben A.!!! Bravo!

Ashley Colby

PhD, Environmental Sociology

Co-founder Rizoma Field School

My book: Subsistence Agriculture in the US

Twitter @RizomaSchool

See my most recent writing here

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[Jean Boucher]

Just to add a tweak here when people say that individual change won't work.

Maybe it's just semantics, but it's not that individual change does not work, the question is organizing it. Of course, if governments want change and individuals don't do it, so much for the change. The issue is relying on a sort of organized collective sustainable voluntary, which is not probable. I mean, if a billion individuals can kill a planet then a billion can try to 'unkill' it, the challenge is to unorganize the killing and to organize the 'unkilling.' Even if humanity could achieve some sort of collective minimalism, there's still a lot of people who want food and shelter and we'll probably still be in overshoot.

Jean 

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[Tom Bowerman]

No, I could not agree with the wholesale statement that "...the change has to occur at the government, and, also, at the financial sectors...".   While this position is not entirely without merit, but were do things start, without some forms of plurality support from the masses, wherein does the durability and permissibility for behavior government derive?

How much does this circle of friends within this listserve even know about the motivated rationale of the public at large?  I have no doubt that much highbrow opinion could flow forth on this topic although it may also be rationally observed that governmental goals, proclamations, high level meetings and binding agreements continue to manifest while year-on-year emissions and generalized emission related consumption continues to rise.

Without fairly generalized support for government writ-large, can lasting policy really occur?  Back to that age-old question: how does social change happen?  From this listserve membership, I'm curious about where each of you think the general pubic consensus reaction to this particular public survey question is:

37.  Many people have mixed opinions about the long term impacts of climate change. Based on your own crystal ball best guess about climate change impact one hundred years from now, please assign a percent chance for each of the outcomes listed below. If you are certain it's completely one option, put 100% on that one, or if you give some credence to others, put your personal odds on to each box but percentages must total 100%.     [randomize answer choices]

Choices:

[ insert % of probability for this option ]  1. Climate shifts all the time and the current climate trend isn't as bad as some predict and could actually be good overall; changes will occur but we'll adjust as the years progress, as we always do.

[ insert % of probability for this option ] 2. Climate change is a disaster in the making but human ingenuity in science and technology will keep pace with the challenge.

[ insert % of probability for this option ] 3.   Climate change is on-track to cause an ecological collapse of unimaginable magnitude, and major loss of human life from drought, fatally high temperatures, and uncontrollable mass migrations.

Of course this question does not explain anything conclusively or broadly although it can give some insight about governmental permissibility without revolt or outright dictatorship. Nor is this question standing alone.  SCORAI could also debate nuances of whether the general public is intelligent or stupid.  But is there disagreement with the precept that government operates durably without pluralistic support? 

Waiting for the type of governmental edict capable of reversing impending ecological collapse is Waiting for Godot.  Governmental leadership will more likely occur when monkey-see-monkey-do social primate behavior observes and mimics working examples of sustainable behaviors for either/both altruistic and self-interest.

Is this  listserve imbalanced: strong on cerebrally esoteric academics and short on kinesthetic practitioners?   

Tom Bowerman,  PolicyInteractive Research

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[Tom Walker]

A half century ago, Jørgen Randers, one of the authors of Limits to Growth, was wondering what it would take to sustain the effort of a movement to achieve an ecologically sustainable society.

From Chapter 7, "The Sustainable Society" in The Power of the Periphery by Peder Ankar

 

A key term that became important in the initial model building was “the sustainable effort,” which was defined as the “total amount of resources” a movement could expend in trying to achieve its goal. This term differs from the descriptive way the word “sustainable” was used by other scholars working with Forrester. As Randers indicated, the “sustainable effort” of a social movement included allocation of efforts to increase its relevance, visibility, income, services, etc. in order to gain momentum for the cause. Sustainability thus understood was a way of describing the survival capacity of a movement based on measuring its “efforts.”

 

The sustainable efforts made by an organization or social movement would enhance the quality of its member experience and thus produce more members, some of whom would become active participants in providing more sustainable efforts which would lead to more members, etc. This feedback loop served as the basis for what became Randers’ model of the lifecycle of movements. The dynamic of a lifecycle could be positive by generating new members or negative, depending on the capability of maintaining the “sustainable effort.” What determined the process was both the quality of member experience and actor experience.

 

These somewhat simplistic models would grow in complexity the following year as Randers’ work matured into his dissertation entitled Conceptualizing Dynamic Models of Social Systems: Lessons from a Study of Social Change. There is not much on religion in these pages. Rather, Randers focused on the general dynamics of social movements as a consequence of introducing an idea into society. The overall perspective of the thesis was very much a top-down approach that provided tools for leaders of movements – a type of reasoning that was typical within the Sloan School of Management.

 

What is notable about this is that progressive Church leaders at a time of religious upheaval would look to Randers and his ideas about social movements in order to make sense of the dynamics of their organizations. He provided them with managerial tools inspired by natural resource management to understand and deal with their respective congregations at times when the member base was fluctuating greatly. For example, Randers’ work was “received with great interest” by representatives of the Jesus Movement and Pentecostals, among others, at the second conference on the Relevance of Organized Religion in January 1973. In the process, Church leaders learned about the importance of leading a “sustainable effort” in order to reach the Golden Age of sustainable equilibrium.

Cheers,

Tom Walker (Sandwichman)

[Ruben Anderson]

Jean, that is getting pretty semantic.

When we talk about individual change, we are not saying it is possible for one person to make a single change. We are saying there are a hundred significant changes that must be made by 8 billion people, and that some of those changes are to emergent collective properties.

But just keeping it simple:

Paper recycling has been widespread since the 90s. It is seen as nearly universally good; it is Motherhood and Apple Pie. The infrastructure is well-developed, and the end product has real value.
And yet in Metro Vancouver, the core of green, hippie British Columbia, a full 10% of the garbage is blue box paper.

Speed limits have been set by law for decades. There are annual campaigns to entreat drivers to not speed. The speed limit is enforced by armed employees of the state who do periodically shoot people dead during speed enforcement stops.
And yet the speeding continues.

These are simple problems. If we were to look at something like switching all furnaces to heat pumps we see bigger problems. In my city 65% of people rent, and so have no control over their heating system. The economic argument has been in favour of heat pumps for years, but of the landlords, some would be unable to afford such a major investment. Even if money was no object, the supply chain to provide heat pumps would take years to spool up—until it ran into resource constraints. And then there would be a shortage of installers, that may or may not get resolved. This pandemic has shown clearly that the old economic myths around labour supply and demand are just myths.

Even if the world were nothing but simple problems, we have limited cognitive capacity. So, to work on just one simple problem, we have to stop doing something that we are already doing in order to free up capacity to work on that one simple problem. And there are hundreds of simple problems. What will we stop doing?

I think the urge to defend individual action traces back to misanthropy, to the old ideas of sin. Individual actions would work, except… except people are bad. Evil, lazy, stupid, malevolent.
That is obviously NOT what people are, but the individualistic drumbeat of good people bootstrapping is baked very deep in the cultures of the overdeveloped world.

When something doesn’t work, it may not be due to user failure. It may just not work. It doesn’t work.
The idea of individual action having even the possibility of being applied to collective problems is wrong. It is broken. It never worked.
It doesn’t work.

Best,

Ruben (not Nelson)

[Jean Boucher]

ok, yes, thx, Ruben, semantics. You missed me a little on the misanthropy a little bit, maybe it just doesn't apply to me. I guess I would file the 'individualistic drumbeat' and the misanthropy under ignorance and possibly misplaced grief.

Cheers,

Jean 

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[Ruben Anderson]

Can you say more Jean? Where does the ignorance lie? Who is ignorant about what?

r.

[Marina Fischer-Kowalski]

Ok, Bill: on the very abstract level you navigate, I can' contradict but must agree.

But what will the process of "being selected out" look like?

I don't believe it will hit the whole of our species alike: it will be a selective process, with some populations, structures, institutions... surviving, and not just randomly. I agree this is not a predictable process, no eagle's view available, only some assumptions (that may change over time).

Nevertheless: better than just wait and see, it makes sense for me to engange in weakening those structures/institutions/complex subsystems (to use your term) that appear to drive us further into the abyss, and give support to / invent / others that appear to give a better chance of survival.

And this, repeating myself, is a matter of continuous analysis, social power struggles and socio-political organization.

marina 

>>> "'Rees, William E.' via SCORAI" <sco...@googlegroups.com> 22.01.2023 21:15 >>>

• Even ordinary citizens are reluctant to sacrifice their comfortable lifestyles for the general welfare of humankind, present or future. Economists recognize this as a variation on the ‘public good/free rider problem.’ “Why should I give up my vacation house and automobile to reduce my carbon footprint for the public good, particularly if few others do?  I would be making a significant sacrifice in exchange for an infinitesimal share of the benefits. Meanwhile, other people would get a free ride on my ‘gift’ to the public.”

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[Jean Boucher]

Hi Ruben, 

       Maybe I'm just naive or well-meaning. I see the origins of the individualist drumbeat (who's beating the drums and hoping we follow?) as ignorance, grief/denial, or maybe misanthropy (less well-meaning) in your terms. It's complicated and I guess we're trying to be reductive from the corporate lie to the collective cultural myth and its hopefulness. 

Am I being more clear or less?   :-)

JB 

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[David Chittenden]

Hi all,

Just going back to your set of propositions Bill that you requested thoughts on ...

I'm not an academic and don't have references at my fingertips, but your set of propositions only seem partially right to me. 

What I think would help is to tease apart:

1. what is innate/'in our nature' given this point in our evolution - across all humans 
2. what different types of cultures and societies have flourished throughout history from this innate nature and adapted to their natural environments (perhaps after driving a few species to extinction)
3. what could be possible for a human society and culture (drawing on the innate characteristic limitations/potentials and the range of viable cultures and societies above. Maybe an aside, but I'm interested in what innate characteristics can be constrained or managed or even 'hacked' and enhanced to some degree with the right knowledge and attention - meditation is an example here)
4. what is particular to this dominant MTI society and culture and our future predicament given where we are at now.

To me, some of your propositions cross these distinctions and in ways that might not be valid.  For example, you say "People are therefore predisposed to think in simplistic, reductionist, mechanistic ways". Perhaps, but could it be that this type of thinking has been hugely promoted and institutionalised since the enlightenment and is therefore dominant now?  Whereas for example, polynesian and melanesian cultures when navigating the greatest ocean voyages ever known integrated knowledge of the stars, wind patterns, wave patterns, cloud patterns, migrating birds, migrating mammals and fish, and attuned sensing and being in a non-thinking way?  This does not seem to me to be 'simplistic, reductionist, or mechanistic' thinking and I believe an important distinction is to go beyond thinking as the only way of knowing

Perhaps you have teased these apart but it was not apparent to me in your post.

Chitty

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[Noel Gerard Keough]

RE innate characteristics,  

I am drawn  to the work of anthropologist Wade Davis and his notion of ethnology-diversity. aRe we short-changing the diversity of human nature given that there still exist 100s if not 1000s of very distinct cultures beyond MTI? I know MTI is extremely dominant in numbers and affect but still if there are new ways of being to be found it may not be found by MTI navel gazing but by giving space and time to other cultural experience, knowledge, lifeways and wisdom out there. We may be surprised at what emerges from a genuine engagement on this score. 

Kind of like saying with humiity to indigenous cultures:. 'We f!@ked up. Tell us what you know? How do you understand humanity and our predicament and how we get out of it.'

Noel

On Jan 24, 2023, at 12:27 PM, David Chittenden <chitt...@gmail.com> wrote:

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[Noel Gerard Keough]

With reference to my comment below. Last year I taught a capstone course in the Undergraduate Certificate in Sustainability Studies at U of C. 

Among our reading was Braiding Sweetgrass. Many student said this was the single most inspiring book they read in their undergraduate degree. 

Noel

On Jan 24, 2023, at 1:45 PM, Noel Gerard Keough <nke...@ucalgary.ca> wrote:

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[David Chittenden]

 'We f!@ked up. Tell us what you know? How do you understand humanity and our predicament and how we get out of it.'

Indeed.   Noting that many indigenous cultures are very very wary of sharing any more of their indigenous knowledge after having been severely burnt in the past.  Do we have the humility and have we earnt the privilege to receive that knowledge? 

[Tom Bowerman]

Noel,  I agree with your conceptual question but do you think that if "they" answered the way your or I expect they would, that the SCORAI group would act on the advice forthwith?  Tom

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[Rees, William E.]

Marina -

I think now we are paddling the same canoe.  

What will be 'selected out' is modern techno industrial culture and sensibilities and, as you say, it won't be a one- sweep process.  Some better prepared societies/institutions, whether by accident or design, will survive.  

All of us at least dimly aware that a global simplification is already beginning to take place are working to slow the descent into the abyss and, indeed, how well we perform is a matter of continuous analysis, social power struggles and socio-political organization.  To that list I would add continuous striving to create an alternative foundation of beliefs, values, expectations and behaviours that can serve to catalyze the transformation to a new/old way of being on Earth.

Bill

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From: sco...@googlegroups.com <sco...@googlegroups.com> on behalf of Marina Fischer-Kowalski <marina.fisc...@boku.ac.at>
Sent: Tuesday, January 24, 2023 10:39:53 AM
To: marina.fisc...@boku.ac.at; sco...@googlegroups.com; Rees, William E.; Ashley Colby
Cc: Ruben Anderson; ashwani....@gmail.com
Subject: Antw: Re: Re: [SCORAI] Renewables Projected to Soon Be One-Fourth of US Electricity Generation. Really Soon

 

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[Jean Boucher]

Hi Bill,
    Sounds fair. I just think it will be the other way around: beliefs, values, and expectations will follow from behaviors, and behaviors will follow from conditions. That's what I get from my research anyway.

Fun fun,

Jean

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[Ruben Anderson]

Thanks for that expansion Jean. 

Most of the overdeveloped societies are individualist societies, not collectivist societies. Why did we become that way? And when?

I don’t know. Certainly capitalism has pushed it hard. The Enlightenment separation of our mind from our body. The New Testament (the Old Testament still often punished communities for the transgression of individuals). Even older to the spread of monotheistic Sun Gods, displacing the animistic Moon Goddesses? 

So, I think the cosmology that supports individualism is in the soil from which we grow the grain to grind the flour to bake our cake. Really deep.

btw… I saw this on the ground several years ago working in a Zero Waste skunkworks. We were trying to develop what zero waste would actually look like and how we would get there. Every now and then we would just hit the wall, with no idea how to proceed—and five minutes later we would be talking about how to increase recycling. 

The individual responses are just so warm and comforting. We know them so well. They are such an easy fallback. 

Best,

Ruben.

[Tom Walker]

Jean wrote: "...beliefs, values, and expectations will follow from behaviors, and behaviors will follow from conditions."

Well put. There is no harm in getting out ahead of the behaviors with beliefs and values but in all humility I don't see that as decisive. It is hubris to try to impose beliefs and values on people who don't want them.

Cheers,

Tom Walker (Sandwichman)

[Rees, William E.]

All very true -- my problem is that the conditions that might produce sustainable behaviours (values, beliefs, etc.) are rather horrific to contemplate. 

Is it not time to test the human capacity for forward planning? To head off those conditions? I agree, it's a long-shot but with enough consciousness-raising...

Bill

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From: Tom Walker <lumpo...@gmail.com>
Sent: Tuesday, January 24, 2023 6:24:47 PM
To: jlb...@gmail.com
Cc: Rees, William E.; sco...@googlegroups.com; Ashley Colby; marina.fisc...@boku.ac.at; Ruben Anderson; ashwani....@gmail.com
Subject: Re: Antw: Re: Re: [SCORAI] Renewables Projected to Soon Be One-Fourth of US Electricity Generation. Really Soon

 

[CAUTION: Non-UBC Email]

[Jean Boucher]

I agree, Bill, even if it's for its own sake, let's try to "test the human capacity for forward planning; to head off horrific conditions; and do the consciousness-raising..."

Jean