"It is no measure of health to be well-adjusted to a profoundly sick.society"
Krishnamurti

What's the point in discussing "how we got into this mess" when "this mess" is likely to "do in" our species soon--by 2040, according to Arctic climate scientist John Davies? We should be asking ourselves what we should be doing NOW that will enable us to "hold our heads high" when the time comes for us to join the 150 - 200 other species that are going extinct--thanks to us!--EACH DAY.

What will happen to the 18,000 golf courses in the USA.
2050 projection is approximately 25,000 courses.
Disneyworld?
Cincinnati-Dayton, 50 miles apart - now one mega city.

When Columbus arrived in the "New World", which wasn't new to anybody else except Europeans at the beginning of race consciousness aka white supremacy, he could have learned what the Arawak natives already knew; that when a culture has a respect for itself, and Nature, the Universe will endlessly provide. However, Columbus, like the culture he represented, had no need for such understanding because a conqueror, with superior weapons, must also have a "superior mind" and has no need for such "primitive" understanding. (And keep in mind that when the Europeans first heard of democracy, in Africa, they thought that was "primitive" too. And look at where we are now and what that "superior understanding" has brought us without democracy's Dual Nature!) Has anyone ever heard of a "jungle primary"?

"People power" are the individual spigots of Universal Consciousness that gives form and function to matter and the wisdom of its use! But that can't happen in ANY system where people are seen as mere laborers (slaves) to serve a pyramidal oligarchy operating by misapplication of Natural Law. Yes, that's right. Systemic self destruction must follow!

Again, an infinite growth model = cancer in macrocosm! which is why we have all this cancer in microcosm via the principle: "As above, so below." (Hermes Trismegistus)

Clearly we must go out and colonize the Galaxy !

And make a mess out of billions and billions of Earth II's.

We've blown every chance we had. Too late now.

One of the best primers to understanding the concept of sustainability, and the inherent flaw in market-based capitalism, and the myth of ever-lasting and necessary economic growth.

https://www.youtube.com/wat...

Dr. Albert A. Bartlett is another few-and-far-between voice, and it's well worth the hour or so it takes to hear this lecture. It will change your view on so much of the hype we constantly hear about our failed economic system.

Creating a vast matrix of human endeavors in support of each other and the natural world has always been the only way. Seeing ourselves as embedded and adorned in the natural world while making open-ended investments in sustainable infrastructure of all kinds, cleaning up and moving rapidly away from fossil fuels and oil by-products, new local-regional-national rail systems, water capture and protection, storage and piping projects, coastal protections, fisheries protections, new and vast sustainable agriculture and animal husbandry, and myriad support for small businesses (human activity) of all sorts that keep us all occupied and enjoined in a craft foundation with life-services for each other - in our short time on the planet - all in a manner that doesn't destroy the planet. Washington is in hell. Those who are behind the veil of our political system and banking and corporations are gone from us. (See: the treason that was 9/11 and the Iraq War and the theft and degradation of our revolutionary political institutions). The present historical fascists and their gross and demonic power over us, along with dangerous levels of unconscious birthing which drives so much systemic contamination, are murdering everything..

I wonder what Monbiot's take is on the overpopulation of the planet and the dramatic increases forecast for the rest of this century, even by 2050?

Please take a little bit of time to explore these sources.

https://www.google.com/sear...

It doesn't take an Einstein to figure out that nothing is forever, that there are limits to everything. And the greedy's turn will come too when having to realize there just isn't any more.

And then the rest of us will all be "Soylent Green"...

We are the only species which never learns from the unintended consequences of its actions which is why we produce new ones all the time. Hence there is no doubt that the necessary combating of global warming and climate change will produce their own unintended consequences which will demand new combats. Is that what happened after we were "chased out of paradise"? All other species are still in paradise. Except perhaps for the domesticated variants.

Agent Smith: "I'd like to share a revelation that I've had during my time here. It came to me when I tried to classify your species and I realized that you're not actually mammals. Every mammal on this planet instinctively develops a natural equilibrium with the surrounding environment but you humans do not. You move to an area and you multiply and multiply until every natural resource is consumed and the only way you can survive is to spread to another area. There is another organism on this planet that follows the same pattern. Do you know what it is? A virus. Human beings are a disease, a cancer of this planet. You're a plague and we are the cure."

- The Matrix

Another natural way to look at it is the predator/prey (I'm)balance. Remove wolves and other predation from deer population, you get overpopulation, over grazing and illness...and ticks...which spread more illness... et al.
Humans have no more serious predators. Perhaps either ourselves or a self inflicted illness will be that predation

Greatest colonialization tool for the white elite is christianity

There is little, if any, historical evidence that a civilization can choose to reverse itself out of the dead-end that it set out on. I guess, in a way, we are making a choice, however severe it is.

Still, I choose not to despair. I do what I can and try to enjoy every day as much as possible. And I'm at least comforted by the fact that we really can't "break the planet." It will recover over time and new forms of life (as well as some old) will inhabit this beautiful place.

"But it also set in train an environmental conflagration -- in both
capitalist and communist nations -- that continues to rage today. I see
coal as a more important determinant of human history than either
capitalism or communism."

Power tends to corrupt, period, so the safest way to distribute power is to spread it widely. Just about any sort of "ism" can support or devolve into "absolute power" or close enough to it to displace social justice. Part of social justice is avoiding undue damage to the world we all share. That includes generations that we expect to follow us. We already warn pregnant women (or anybody) not to eat too much tuna because the whole ocean is now contaminated with mercury and not to feed too much rice to babies because so much of it is now contaminated with arsenic (both being chemical elements, can never "break down" over time). The earth is an island in a very large space and there is pretty much no where else to go if we continue to foul our own nest.

Funny, without knowing all the details, I realized in the 4th grade that unlimited growth was impossible.

Carl Sagan said all this before George did, namely there are two types of evolution: biological and cultural. Biologically, we are still selfish primates and our relatively short life span doesn't help. We are also violent and our main predator is us. We kill one another. We came off the chimp line, not the bonobo's. As Carl said we aren't going to 'evolve' in time to save ourselves from our biological pre-destiny to be a bunch of selfish aholes so all we have left is something unique to us--culture. It is extremely dangerous if our culture aligns itself with our primitive nature as it is is doing now (case in point, people who produce television shows/movies who make a point of sticking to the "formula" of violence and sex can't totally be blamed for it.They realize this is where we are as a species and it brings in a ton of money for THEM; however, they are stupid in not understanding they are tanking the species by shooting so low, culturally). The point is there has to be a counter-balance to our primitive primate nature and all we have is culture--cultural evolution. Sagan didn't think we're going to make it and for the earth's sake, I hope we don't so she can once again, live in her own version of peace. As he said, "the tragedy of the human species is it has evolved the capacity for foresight but refuses to use it" = our extinction. RIP Carl Sagan.

"Anyone who believes in indefinite growth in anything physical, on a physically finite planet, is either mad or an economist." (this is the original quote by Kenneth E. Boulding, the former president of the American Economic Association)
https://www.facebook.com/Ec...

"…is either mad or an economist."

He could have added: But, I repeat myself.
https://www.youtube.com/wat...

There are some YouTubes of the incredibly sane Kenneth Boulding talking about geometric progression, etc.

And the champions of human values? The co-op business model was invented in a process that led from Robert Owens pro-labor experiments to the worker-owned Rochdale Co-op store and its model of 5 (now 8) principles, including education. Ecological literacy, with credits broadly deserved but certainly to John Muir, Barry Commoner, and Rachel Carson is another. Fritjof Capra has become a physicist and spiritual philosopher who now advocates ecological literacy. We could throw comparative religion, ecological studies of all academic subjects from psychology to economics, and social philosophies as well.

"It would be wrong to blame only capitalism."

He's right. Elites enslaved the people and plundered the planet under numerous other banners besides capitalism. So we need a different model.

Let's look at the basics of human nature. Elites are those driven mostly by the human ego. The people are those driven mostly by the human heart. Blame the human ego for all societal problems, and you've created the clarity that dissolves all delusions. You have taken the first step.

Next, fill the echo chambers with the clarity of describing the problem as such, which builds solidarity among the people, and you've taken the second step.

This solidarity among the people implies universal enlightenment and leads to universal cooperation. This in turn enables universal adoption of the Hippocratic Oath as it becomes the obvious right thing to do. This is the third step. It implies the reign of the human heart. Retirement of the human ego.

This solves all societal problems created by the human ego. And with this we are finished with the design/implementation of the people's nirvana. The rest is maintenance. This is the best we can do, an end to all institutional skulduggery, including war, and it's infinitely better than what we have today.

"Elites enslaved the people and plundered the planet under numerous other banners besides capitalism"

Very true.

Of course, capitalism has proved to be VERY effective and efficient at destroying lives and our Environment...

Human history is replete with examples of our technological capability for controlling, exploiting and destroying others and the biosphere's resources outstripping our development of the moral character to suppress those impulses.

I think we need to ask ourselves which we value more - intelligence or cleverness?

Intelligence requires reigning in egoistic hubris so that we can understand how interdependent everything is (including humanity). Cleverness is the ego's deadly trap.

At least, that's how I see things.

A thought provoking article in many ways. One could argue that expansion and growth occurs in more ways than just within the physical world.....the former being where it appears we are lacking. Technology, self-indulgence, and hunger for economic power have apparently exceeded our abilities to realistically reflect on the human condition. A failure to internally contemplate who we really are.

“The struggle of man against power is the struggle of memory against forgetting." - Milan Kundera

Clearly mistakes (many the same ones) are repeated over and over.....generation after generation, until a cataclysmic event shakes or destroys the bubble we have created.

“Insanity: doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results. “ - Albert Einstein

One believes there are indicators and signs aware and perceptive observers can openly discuss and present as options to current trends.....in fact some really aren't options, but rather inevitabilities.

The only object/subject that can sustain never ending growth is the human mind...let's hope and strive to use it in a universally effective way.

One cannot fault what Monbiot
says, but of course it is important to temper that with what might be termed “The
other truth” that there are now 7+ billion of us sitting on a planet able to
support, in any ongoing sense, around 1 billion.

Those extra 6 billion are supported only by a continued input of hydrocarbon fuels, and their existence cannot be sustained without it, despite the optimism on “renewables”.

To discuss a few of the points raised in this article, it is necessary to extract relevant quotes: 1-----This is the age of the chancer: If you have enough money,
enough muscle, (---), you can grab a slice of the public domain and call it
your own.-----.

To put an end to that we have to unwind 10k years of history. That’s what happened when the first hunter-gatherer decided to enclose land and grow food instead of chasing it. They took from the commons, and acquired capital. I own my home, I am therefore a capitalist, taking from the commons. I own it only because my hydrocarbon burning employment (all jobs burn fuel) allowed me to extract personal wealth from the commons. I rather enjoy my job. I imagine GM feels the same. My point is that we are all locked into the trap of “acquisition and progress” whether we like it or not, and intend to hang on to it. I daresay GM has a pension plan; that
is extraction from the commons 30 years from now---entirely dependent on energy
input and consumption. It is a finite concept, but rather like the stern of the Titanic, we have no option but to scramble towards it in the hope of something “turning up”.

Aboriginal (hunter-gatherer) tribes live sustainably because, unlike us, they do not take from the commons.
The problem really is that simple, and points to our future.

Once we begin to acquire “property” then the appetite for more becomes insatiable. I would have bought a mansion if I had been able to afford one. As it is, my small scale affluence makes me comfortable. I am acutely aware of millions who are not. Our primitive “hunter” mentality is driven by seemingly unlimited access to surplus energy resources. The billionaire always needs another billion. That’s what is stripping the Earth of our life support system. I played a very minor role in it.

So lets not shy away from what GM is advocating here. The wealth of the rich must be appropriated and redistributed more equably. I think that puts it in a nutshell. They will
never surrender it willingly, therefore it will have to be done with force. So
who exactly is going to be tasked with doing this? Somebody will have to. A
mythical “they” won’t cut it. But practically every member of the human species
is cursed with an acquisitive streak, and previous revolutions have
demonstrated very clearly what happens after the aristos have been put up
against the wall.

Or maybe the uber-rich are to be sent to work on small farms?
That sounds very familiar!

My ultimate crime
would theft of the commons---of which I plead guilty. I would not be very happy
if a local commissar turned up and ordered that I must fill my spare rooms with
homeless refugees. The proletariat who would condemn me would take my place and
start the whole cycle over again. Trust me on that one. Humankind has spent
millennia grabbing all that has been available. We will not change within a
generation without harsh physical force.

The fact remains that we (in the developed west that is) have been conditioned to go on demanding more, for no better reason that there has always been more. We are in a collective panic because it is pretty obvious that there is no more to be had. (which is why we vote for politicians who say there is)

And also why I wrote
the book, The End of More, http://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/...

It is an attempt to hammer home the reality that there really is no more, and that
spending money, redirecting wealth, won’t give us any more. 10k years ago, we
decided the aboriginal lifestyle was a bad idea. I think we are about to be
proved wrong.
I fear we are due for turbulent times.

We will not go gentle into that good night.

Excellent discussion, Norman. What you don't get into here, but might well in your book, is that the 30 or so richest countries in the world control about half the world's wealth, have about 1/6th the world's population and are essentially not growing by numbers of birth. These are very rough figures, but the point is that the richest people are being out bred by the vastly greater number of poorer ones (see "Demographic Transition" for a model of why this is occurring).

So just talking about the sheer numbers of people in the world is of limited use. In a rich country one can bemoan the rapidly increasing numbers of poor; in a poor country one can bemoan the vast amounts of resources held by the relatively few rich. Both views are correct. Obviously this is an increasingly bad recipe for planetary stability; the Syrian refugee crisis (at bottom as much a climate shift issue as anything else) could just be the beginning.

I would say though that in a sense "wealth" is still being created. It could be new knowledge, new technologies, more efficient ways of doing things, etc. Granted all these depend at bottom on a finite earth but they do allow, at least in the short term, tapping into "more." But whether we are smart and driven enough to break out of our current trap (ice asteroids for water, rebuilding our energy into a carbon-free system, etc.) I don't know. And even if we are, whether we have the time and the will to bring everyone along is very uncertain.

Turbulent times indeed. I look at my grandchildren and worry.

fixing one problem seems to put us on a collision course with another---we cure major diseases, and the population expands exponentially---we solve famines, and the same thing happens. We evolve production systems to make things cheaper and faster, and we end up with industrialised wars that last for years.
This is not to say we shouldn't do these things--I merely point out the results of our actions and "free choices".

The disproportionate growth of wealth is the inevitable result of any capitalist system.
We used to have a society where the strongest individual became tribal leader, by virtue of the fact that he could acquire energy better than anyone else...ie was better at killing mammoths or whatever. This also improved his breeding potential, women being attracted to a man most likely to provide for their offspring.
That fulfilled the prime function of humankind---eating and procreation.

We might think ourselves as more "civilised" now, but nothing has changed. Instead of physical strength, we now have one man in 000s smarter than anyone else, who uses intellect to acquire energy, only now it's in the form of businesses and resources. If this is improved by a good geographical location, then industrial supremacy is inevitable. It also explains why you see a bimbo on the arm of an 80 yr old billionaire.

The UK had clever men in the 18th c--but they were also sitting on the hydrocarbon equivalent of Saudi arabia now. So the UK mushroomed into a global empire for 100 years or so, before fading as our resources declined

Same applies to USA---it happened there too. Now USA resources are in decline, hence resource wars in the middle east.

The cleverest people in industrialised societies sucked wealth to themselves. That is what human nature does, given free rein. It explains the current disproportion of wealth on the planet.

As all physical resources are consumed, then humanity will rebalance itself. When we cannot know, but it will not be a gentle decline into pastoralism as GM and others seem to think.
The birth rate in developed nations is in decline---no one links this to the fact that birth control is a product of sophisticated industry (as is disease control). Without hydrocarbon energy input, bacteria will reassert their dominant role in our lives, as will the birth/death normality of previous times.
A century of disease control has weakened our immune systems, we might find ourselves in the same situation as the Native Americans in the 1600s.

As to "scientific breakthroughs"--these are always built on the success of previous knowledge and acheivements. Never in isolation. So far, the laws of physics seem to preclude anything revolutionary.
It's as well to remember that Chinese fireworks, the Wright brothers and the Apollo moon landings used the same technology--(chemical combustion)

If there is anything "new" out there---it had better show up pretty quickly. The best guess is we have maybe 20 odd years of oil left if we're lucky.
We will most certainly continue to fight over what's left, and in doing so, destroy what's left.

Thanks for the great reply! It's a pleasure to have a thoughtful discussion like this. The one point I would disagree with is that declining birth rates have largely happen due to social and economic changes. Urbanization makes children go from assets on farms to being liabilities in the streets, women often work and hence gain both some independence and exposure to new ideas outside their previously rigid social structures, and as longevity and access to education increase people realize they don't need so many descendants to take care of them in their old age.

I fully agree that we may be setting ourselves up for Medieval plagues again--fast transportation has recently moved several diseases around the world--but I don't think the high birth/death rates of a preindustrial society are likely to return to the modern world. At least not without a "12 Monkeys" scenario.

I enjoy engaging in worthwhile discussion too---makes a change from the usual ranting one finds online.

as i see it, the danger factor still lies with the de-industrialisation of birth control.

with grandchildren--you are much the same age as me I guess, remembering a time when contraception was difficult or non existent, or relatively expensive, awkward or subject to religious dogma---all depending on where you lived in the world.
Nature still drives the urge to reproduce, and in a collective sense, only outright starvation stops it.
Starving mothers simply do not ovulate.

Education has reduced the birthrate, agreed, but only because women know how to get hold of the means to prevent unwanted pregnancies, Those "means" are factory produced in colossal quantities. Without the industrial system, they would not be available anywhere, but short of actual starvation, reproduction would still continue.

I think in a post industrial environment, rigid social structures would return. Look at the current political interference in the USA over abortion--it appears to be more important than anything else. My concern is that ultimately the USA is headed for a theocratic dictatorship post-oil. I hope I'm wrong.

Democracy has existed only in the time period covered by the industrial revolution--say the last 200 years, maybe less. I don't think that is a coincidence. Only growing democracy, linked to socio/economic change has given choices to women about reproduction. Remove that, together with the idea that women have independent choices, and you revert to unchecked birthrates.
Infant survival of course, is another matter entirely--but that too is dependent on medical/industrial intervention (vaccines etc)

Our old age is supported by cheap fuel. Without that, and the infrastructure it supports, our only means of sustenance will be family. Our pensions depend on progressive industry. Again--that is only a century old.----But maybe we wont live so long!

I wrote this piece on a downsized environment, you might be interested:
http://www.endofmore.com/?p...

Oh, should have added: The problem is that while Europe, Japan and North America fairly quickly--say a century--reached low birth/death rates, the Third World is larger and so taking much longer. So while it may get there in time we might not have time for it to do so. (There also isn't the safety valve of migration.) There are some exceptions, like Thailand, but by and large we are missing government policies to help steer this change. (China's 1 child's was brutal though somewhat effective.) Religious issues, fears that the West is trying to dominate again, and sheer social conservatism (which is why in the US groups like the Amish and Orthodox Jews have many children) all work against simple solutions.

No

Never-Ending Growth ..

.. is the first and foremost tenet of neo-Crapitalists ...

Obviously growth cannot continue forever on a finite planet, but Monbiot lacks the courage to apply that to human population growth, relentlessly adding yet another billion people in about only 12 years, rate likely to get even faster with religion in the ascendancy and China, Iran, and other key countries taking steps to increase their growth rates.

I doubt that George Monbiot is personally exacerbating the problem of overpopulation...

not lack of courage- the planet can support all the people living on it now. the rich part of the world is over-consuming- EU and USA consume 70 times as much of the planet as the poor half

Please see my comments above. Yes you are right, but an equal distribution of resources would put the whole planet, now pushing towards 8 billion, at a standard of living somewhere back in the 17th Century. I don't see the West and Japan giving up all that much. There has to be a better way, though if I knew it would be waiting for a Nobel Peace Prize!

Yes, this is purposefully done to oppress and keep the masses down and from challenging.

Dear George.. you're unfairly insulting of chimpansees. But I'm sure you already regret what you said about them.

"I see coal as a more important determinant of human history than either capitalism or communism."

Reminds me of the Karl Marx quote:
"In acquiring new productive forces men change their mode of production; and in changing their mode of production, in changing the way of earning their living, they change all their social relations. The hand-mill gives you society with the feudal lord; the steam-mill society with the industrial capitalist."

It's terrific to read Monbiot's incomparably intelligent, insightful critiques of global neoliberalism run amok. In fact, hat tip to him for systematically neutralizing key elements of global plutocracy's arguments for neoliberal/neoconservative ideological hegemony. He's validating concerns evident to environmental movement thinkers and social reconstructionists beginning as early as two generations ago.

We should be grateful to Mr. Monbiot for deciding to use his influence to bring issues like these to a wider audience. The question is why is it taking so many minds amongst the so-called intellectual classes to pick up on a truth self-evident to anyone with even a modicum of common sense? While we need a broader alliance of academics to go on public record with the facts as Mr. Monbiot does, we cannot afford to dither waiting for a preponderance of conventionally-minded scholars, heretofore unfocused on the distorted global growth model and its enfolded challenges, to wake up and smell the catastrophe. It's like plodding through economic/political/social reform false starts, missteps, dead ends and as every new generation of leaders gets up to snuff on the world as it is.