“We have met the enemy, and he is us.”
-- Pogo Possum, via Walt Kelly
The context of this work is a set of emerging or looming global crises.
These include:
- Global climate change:
- Usually called
“global warming”; I use the less common name because
it’s more descriptive of the effects of a rise in worldwide
average temperature. Another appropriate name would be “global
climate instability”. In identifying this as a crisis, I’m
not taking sides on whether it’s manmade (either totally or
partially); whatever the cause, if it’s coming, we need to learn
as much as possible about it, and learn to respond appropriately. (Of
course, to the extent that it may be caused by some of our activities,
an appropriate response would include modifying those activities.)
- Peaking production of fossil fuels:
- It’s generally recognized now that within 2-3 decades, the
world production of petroleum and natural gas will have reached a peak,
and will inevitably decline thereafter. Also, it’s
becoming more widely accepted that the peak may come much sooner, perhaps
within this decade. (This is still controversial, but it’s no
longer dismissed as a crackpot doomsday theory.) The problem is that
the current global economy is predicated on perpetual growth in
production and consumption; powerful forces make it almost impossible
at present to even raise the idea of changing the dominant economic
model to one capable of gracefully handling stable, and even declining,
production and consumption. This may delay global action within the
current political and social frameworks until it can no longer be
effective without a drastic change in those frameworks; by any
definition, such a change would constitute a crisis.
- Potable water:
- This is already a significant problem in many areas, and may become
much more severe. Unfortunately, the current global economic system is
exacerbating the problem by treating water as a commodity for
international companies to take control of and extract maximum profits
from. In general, this will be a consideration affecting the human
carrying capacity of many areas of the world. Even where water in
general is abundant, population pressure can adversely affect the supply
of potable water. (In addition to drinking water, the supply of water
suitable for agricultural use is similarly stressed.)
- Global social-political instability:
-
One effect of the Internet and other global information systems has
been to strongly increase the visibility of the disparity in wealth
among nations and among groups within nations. This has increased
the level of dissatisfaction and despair in have-not nations and
areas within otherwise wealthy nations, and causes or exacerbates
problems such as terrorism, national destabilization, violence
arising from religious fanaticism, etc. Again, the behavior of the
current global economic system, which is acting to increase the
disparity in wealth, only adds to the problems. Also, most
political systems respond to increasing instability with increasing
defensiveness and propensity for violent reactions.
- Population growth:
- All other crises are made more severe by the continuing growth of the
human population. While there’s some evidence that growth is
slowing, no longer being exponential, the trend is still toward a
significant population increase over the next few decades. The real
danger here is that this growth will swamp any efforts to address the
other problems, and lead to a population crash. (This is a well-known
phenomenon in studies of population dynamics, where a population fails
to self-regulate its numbers to match the available resources.)
I’m far from the only person to see this, nor even near to being
the first. My quest for understanding was triggered by a visit several years
ago to Jay Hanson’s site Die Off
(which is still operational, but has a new maintainer). Being unwilling to
accept the apocalyptic vision of that site on faith, I began to investigate
for myself. In the course of the investigation, I’ve encountered many
interesting and useful web sites (and the number seems to be growing
continually), as well as books, magazine articles, etc. Also, there are
several organizations in place or forming to study and/or take action with
regard to various aspects of the crises.
As part of my way of investigating, I created an outline of a document and
began to fill it in to capture the essence of what I was learning, and to
focus myself on what I needed to study further. I also
shared it with others, even in its mostly skeletal state, to get feedback on
whether I was understanding things well, and in hopes of getting help to fill
in the various sections. The current state of that outline is over there. In the process of doing this,
I’ve gained a vision of what I want to accomplish, and how I want to go
about it. One thing I’ve noticed in my investigations is that almost
all of the efforts mentioned above are focused on one aspect or another of
one crisis or another. There are a few works that take a “whole
systems” viewpoint, but they’re typically at a high enough level
that they hardly connect with the other sites. (This is not intended as a
criticism of anyone’s work; it’s natural to specialize, to focus
where one has interest, expertise, or greatest concern.)
This leaves an opening for a resource that could tie all these works (and
workers) together to create a coordinated program of understanding and
action, a gap that I’m rash enough to try to fill. (See the rest of
the site for how I’m currently going about this.) By turning from a
single linear document to a hyperdocument (this site), I hope to make it
easier for others to come to understand the concepts and my vision, and to
decide if they’d like to use the site as a resource, contribute to it,
and/or support it in other ways.
All content on this
website (including text, photographs, audio files, and any other original
works), unless otherwise noted, is licensed under a Creative Commons
License
.