It's amazing how few comments there are to a piece this good. Is everyone stunned?

My reaction to Heinberg's listing of five strategies is that there is only so much time and energy any person can devote to any of them.

Probably the most effective stategy in terms of "bang for the buck" is sabotage, but that's not something that those with family responsibilities can easily engage in. Perhaps there are hackers out there who can shut down the doomsday machine anonymously. If so, they should get to it.

I'm putting almost all my effort into "bracing for impact". Heinberg sees this as a collective effort, as he would "advise redesigning economies and institutions so that they will continue to function in a post-carbon, post-growth future". But I suggest avoiding getting bogged down redesigning "economies and institutions", for now, and concentrate first on getting one's own house in order. The more family units that can function beyond the constraints of modern industrial civilization the better. They will be the building blocks of the post-doomsday-machine future.

Great piece; couldn't have put it better.

I use the Titanic analogy when giving talks or writing about this; there is a time to warn, a time to construct life-rafts, and a time to launch them. Events move on, closing doors on opportunities.

A great piece I will share around. I do have one quibble. There certainly are people who already have more wealth than they could spend in a 100 lifetimes, and think the purpose of the rest of their lives is to add another zero. Yes, in theory this wealth could be put to much better use. But does it actually exist? If the size of the financial economy now dwarfs the real economy by a huge amount--doesn't that mean those large number with many zeroes are largely just numbers, unconnected to real wealth (land, warehouses full of metal rods, storehouses of grain)? Doesn't this mean that the overshoot discussed in the first part of this is where the real limits lie, and while we could certainly improve our priorities for public and private spending (over a trillion US dollars to make a system of new nuclear weapons--I don't think you could come up with worse prioritization if that were the goal), I don't think we COULD have access to the resources implied by those numbers even if we dragged the world's billionaires into the streets and hanged them from lampposts and took all their money, in time-honored tradition. The impact of the stupidity and viciousness of this project is in the resources and labor that actually goes into the bombs, and longer term, the risk they will pose for millennia in the regions where the things end up--assuming we can't block this horrible insane project. And of course, in the things we could have done with that money--building solar panels and windmills and watermills for grinding grain, to make our children's and grandchildren's lives easier than our great-great-great-great grandparents' lives were.

Good news: I have read that many of the billionaires are investing in land because the financial system seems a bit shaky. For example: https://www.businessinsider...
That means we can grab a lot of "their" wealth for the commons, maybe we won't even need to hang them from lampposts!

??? Land is the KEY resource. This is only good news if we assume we can take over that land. I hope Dmitri Orlov is right; he said at an Age of Limits conference, "In a time of collapse, no government will enforce the ownership rights of absentee owners."

It seems to me that in the Great Depression the US government did indeed enforce the ownership rights of absentee owners, creating a lot of "Okie" refugees.

I don't think the Depression quite qualifies as collapse, though it was getting close.

The word 'wealth' has roots in the Old English word wela, the Middle English wele and weal -- all of which meant well-being, not an accumulation of money or stuff. What we now call wealth is ultimately nothing more than an arbitrarily decided and ideologically imposed modification of its earlier form, a form which made far better sense as a conceptual basis for economic theory in the paradigm sense.

That this is so is why I call for a new paradigm of economics in which (a) economic theory embraces a definition of wealth as well-being, and (b) well-being is understood holistically and inclusively, such that the well-being of all of life, taken as a whole (including all species, all people, all ecosystems, the biosphere) are included in the theories and models of economists, (c) the creation of wealth as well-being is the explicit purpose of 'economics' and economies.

Well being is, essentially, health. And any sane and reasonable person must acknowledge that in no sense can 'wealth' be accumulated at a greater cost in ill health to people, biodiversity, ecosystems, the biosphere. Therefore, our popular and nearly ubiquitous concept of 'wealth' is demonstrably false -- thus proving that we're overdue for a paradigm shift in economics (theory and practice).

It is now commonplace to speak of health and ill health in relation to social well-being, relational well-being, the physical health of individuals, the health of ecosystems and the biosphere, so we already share a cultural common sense understanding of well-being in nearly every domain -- including even psychology. It's time we turn this common sense into common practice.

Access to land and water (Earth) is a fundamental necessity for real wealth (well-being), and the framing of wealth as property which is the old, decrepit and now obsolete definition (obsolete because no longer useful) is the essential cause of a lack of access, so returning land and water access to those who will use it appropriately for the well-being of all is the most fundamental political and social necessity of our time in history. Only a revolution can accomplish this, however, and that revolution can only be non-violent and non-insurrectionary in an essentially Gandhian approach.

What we need is some sort of mass Salt March type of event to spark the revolution -- a moral and educational revolution at its heart.

Only this time the revolution will not have charismatic leadership in the form of a leading figure like Gandhi or Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. The days of charismatic leadership of that sort is behind us. This is the time in which leadership must look more like the murmuration of starlings than the V-formation of geese.

Nevertheless we must in some sense sit down at our lunch counters, refuse to go to the back of the bus and march to the sea to make salt. This is how we break the spell which is the illusion that some own land while others do not.

https://youtu.be/WW3uk95VGes

I hate to be a doomer on this, but I really don't see a way to reform this system into something sustainable. Reforming the machine from inside the machine can only work for things that do not challenge validity of the machine itself. A good example would be something like gay marriage. There can be protests and marches and impassioned speeches, then when gay marriage is finally allowed, everyone can sit back and think, "Wow, the system really works, and we really accomplished something! Protests and marches work! Yay!" That grand accomplishment is trivial, and does not challenge the system at all. It keeps chugging along, faster and faster toward the cliff. What about stopping a pipeline? Its meaningless. The oil will just get to market by train or truck instead, and will still be burned by those very people who drove hundreds or thousands of miles to protest the pipeline! That's really swell, but protesting does not change the laws of thermodynamics. I personally love the idea of Transition Towns and Ecovillages, i.e. "build alternatives," but they will be quickly ransacked and destroyed by the unprepared starving masses when the machine fails them. They WILL eat the seed corn when they're starving! Somehow we have to convince billions of first world people to voluntarily give up almost all their first world luxuries and privileges, and embrace some sort of bucolic peasantry. That's a pretty hard sell, so I give that a virtually zero percent chance of actually happening. My strategy, like Joe Clarkson's, is bracing for impact, and most of my work is about how to make useful contraptions out of the wreckage once the pieces stop bouncing! Sorry for the dark post, but too much mindless positivity is detrimental to a realistic appraisal of our predicament. You can follow my progress on you tube. https://www.youtube.com/cha...

Thanks for the kind words! Cheers!

This facile, prolix article by Mr. Heinberg is another unnecessary addition to the, “What we Need to Do to Survive,” corpus. The author uses the first 12 paragraphs to state the obvious: neoliberal capitalism is destroying Earth.

Heinberg proposes four points for ameliorating environmental collapse. He prefaces his four points of how to save Earth with the observation that few people understand the environment is collapsing.

The author is correct. Despite over three decades of ever increasing reports that are now almost daily, a vast literature describing the catastrophic nature of climate change, and a large number of unprecedented, human caused horrendous environmental catastrophes, humanity remains indifferent.

So why does Heinberg, along with so many other authors, spill so much ink tilting at windmills by proposing changes that won’t be made?

This is the author’s superficial strategy to ameliorate environmental collapse caused by capitalism:

1. Capitalism can be redesigned, something that is “theoretically . . . possible.” Reforming or replacing capitalism is completely possible. Capitalism is a human devised economic system, not an immutable physical law. Since there’s zero popular or political will to implement an environmentally friendly economic system, capitalism won’t be redesigned or replaced. Capitalism’s war on the Earth will continue unabated.

2. Build alternatives that will be havens as capitalism shows signs of “imminent failure.” There’s a plethora of evidence that capitalism failed decades ago. The death of half the Great Barrier Reef, a vast number of other dead coral reefs, horrendous, unprecedented wildfires and storms, and unprecedented, ferocious heat waves aren’t signs of imminent failure?

Few know about the obscure transition and economic localization movements. These movements are ignored by the media, and are virtually unknown by the public. Just how a tiny number of obscure alternative communities are going to have any appreciable impact isn’t explained. Despite an ever-increasing number of ferocious environmental catastrophes, there’s no evidence of either any public knowledge or interest in any of these alternative living communities. Nor does Heinberg explain how these alternative movements can accommodate the “survivors” of collapse.

Will there be enough water, food and power to share with survivors? Are these alternative communities totally independent now from mainstream society in having an adequate supply of food, water, power and health care? Are any of these communities able to be totally independent in governance, providing education, and meeting all the other necessities of life? In America’s gun-crazed culture, will some survivors take what they need by force? Are any of these alternative communities prepared for violent attacks? None of these issues is addressed.

3. Defend indigenous societies and wild ecosystems? Capitalist nations are busy destroying themselves. They can’t save themselves, much less indigenous societies and wild ecosystems. Virtually all existing ecosystems that haven’t already been destroyed will be either extremely degraded or destroyed by the Moloch of capitalism.

Heinberg’s erroneously asserts that his proposals have made “limited headway”. In fact none of his proposals have made any meaningful headway whatever in reforming capitalism or curbing humanity’s relentless destruction of Earth.

“Resilience” and “imagination” are two exceedingly tiresome, overused words that Heinberg and Hopkins treat as sacred mantras and repeat ad nauseum. Endless repetition of these words is a ludicrous exercise in very lazy, magical thinking. Endless repetition of these mantras will do nothing to ameliorate collapse. Heinberg and Hopkins should offer periodic resilience-imagination hootenannies. Although these gatherings will be of no practical value, the participants might at least have some fun in the Hare Krishna mode.

Your suggestions?

My suggestion is to accept the reality that humanity will continue to wage war on Earth. Although extremely painful, I accept this reality and do my best to live the happiest life I can. I take comfort being a senior citizen.

Many suggestions and proposals have been made over the decades to change our ruinous course. Most of these proposals are thoughtful and helpful; none have been implemented, nor are any likely to be.

Exceeding 1.5C in warming this decade is a virtual certainly. Global temperature is now 1.2C above the preindustrial era. In 2018 the IPCC reported that to be kept to a maximum of 1.5C of warming, greenhouse gas emissions must be decreased by at least 7.6% each year for a decade. Emissions increased in both 2018 and 2019. Solely due to the pandemic, emissions decreased a little over 6% in 2020.

In December last year the UN Secretary General accurately and succinctly stated, “Humanity is waging war on nature. This is suicidal . . . Biodiversity is collapsing. One million species are at risk of extinction. Ecosystems are disappearing before our eyes … Human activities are at the root of our descent toward chaos.”

Late last year the UN received pledges from nations to reduce emissions by 2030. These climate pledges would reduce greenhouse gas emissions by less than 1 percent.
Scientists are concerned about climate change tipping points. Scientists are also concerned that climate change may become self-sustaining, at which point no amount of emission reduction would make a difference.

Humanity is playing imbecilic Russian Roulette with the most powerful force of nature. The results have been catastrophic.

The great historian Edward Gibbon wrote, “History indeed is little more than the register of the crimes, follies and misfortunes of mankind.” Climate change is far and away the biggest crime and folly humanity has inflicted on itself and on Earth.

Yes, I think "accept the reality" is a reasonable path. Sometimes those who accept it continue to work on a favorite project, even though they know the effects will probably be sorely limited. Some want to reduce harm, even if only temporarily. Some hope that their actions might prepare people mentally.

Others will be encouraged by Richard's guidance. I wish them well, though I think their chances of success (on an adequate scale for avoiding collapse of civilization) are small.

Having followed developements as you have, John, I understand your point of view.

Here is where I differ:
- No one knows the future. We can watch trends, but most long-term predictions are inevitably wrong.
- Assuming that it's possible to change our future for the better is like Pascal's Wager. There's no downside to being wrong, and there is great benefit if one is right.

That said, I've made my peace with whatever happens. I would keep on doing my little part no matter what. It makes life meaningful.

I think "facile" is overdoing your critique, but I agree with your points.

Brilliant, Thank you for posting this. It's interesting that the notion of "potlatch" is somehow making a re-run. What is also present here, is the essence of the writings of Georges Bataille (e.g. "The accursed share"), I wonder if Mr Heinberg is or David Fleming was aware of that. Anyway, I will order the book now, it seems a very promising and worthwhile read.

Indeed I can confirm that Bataille's 'accursed share' was part of the inspiration behind Fleming's thinking.

The section of Surviving the Future that Richard references above was drawn from Fleming's spectacular Dictionary for the Future and How to Survive it, specifically this entry:

https://leanlogic.online/in...

Here I will recommend Carol Deppe's Resilient Gardener. She suggests focusing on a few key crops--for her it's corn, beans, squash, potatoes and duck eggs. I grow several kinds of beans but don't make them a major crop. But let me here put in a plug for one kind of bean many people don't realize they can grow--peanuts! Some varieties only need 110 days.

Last year I only grew potatoes and tomatoes with varying success. This year I'm planning on adding Beans, corn, and sugar beets. Live the Beans! 😁

this is a great article along the same lines:

https://joelcaris.com/2021/...