It's not so much the solution to our troubles, it's a likely outcome of current trends. If we're in carrying capacity overshoot, regardless of what we do we're going to get a dieoff :(. I really hope I'm wrong, because policy and social change can't countermand the laws of biology and physics.
I tried the exercise, though. I started doing a list of what we need to do to fix things. It got depressingly long and a lot of it was distressingly unlikely. In no particular order:
1) Convince the governments of the developed and developing worlds to take meaningful, effective legislative action on climate change.
2) Convince the populations of the developed and developing worlds to take meaningful, effective action on climate change via changing their consumption habits.
3) Convince the governments of the developed and developing worlds to take meaningful, effective, and timely steps towards transitioning away from oil towards renewable, sustainable, alternative energy sources.
4) Convince the populations of the developed and developing worlds to change their consumption habits to reduce oil dependency and minimize energy consumption during said transition.
5) Completely alter humanity's food production and distribution systems to eliminate environmentally harmful farming methods, topsoil depletion, dependency on oil for fertilizers, pesticides, herbicides, production, harvesting, storage, transport, and distribution, overfishing, and habitat destruction.
6) Once we've done so while somehow managing to produce enough food to still feed everybody, figure out how to allocate and distribute our food production in a just and equitable fashion.
7) Convince the US government that hey, wars of aggression against small oil-producing nations that post no threat to Western Civilization really aren't cool.
8) Convince the jihadis to live in peace and harmony with the rest of us. This might require solving the Israeli/Palestinian problem first.
9) Convince the governments of the developed and developing worlds to take meaningful legislative action on environmental conservation in order to conserve biodiversity and habitat, both on land and in the water.
10) Convince the population of the developed worlds to change their consumption habits for the greener. Meaningfully, not just buying green-labelled versions of the same old crap in the supermarket. Convince everybody else to stop deforesting and otherwise exhausting resources and trashing their environments, even if it means abject poverty for them.
11) Convince the governments of the developing world to take meaningful legislative action on population growth.
12) Convince the population of the developing world to stop having quite so many kids.
That's a dozen unlikely to highly improbable things, and I'm not a character in a Lewis Carroll novel. I just cannot see all of the above happening anytime soon, and I really can't see us as a species waking up in time. If we're lucky, we'll hit the civilizational brick wall after we're dead.
no subject
I tried the exercise, though. I started doing a list of what we need to do to fix things. It got depressingly long and a lot of it was distressingly unlikely. In no particular order:
1) Convince the governments of the developed and developing worlds to take meaningful, effective legislative action on climate change.
2) Convince the populations of the developed and developing worlds to take meaningful, effective action on climate change via changing their consumption habits.
3) Convince the governments of the developed and developing worlds to take meaningful, effective, and timely steps towards transitioning away from oil towards renewable, sustainable, alternative energy sources.
4) Convince the populations of the developed and developing worlds to change their consumption habits to reduce oil dependency and minimize energy consumption during said transition.
5) Completely alter humanity's food production and distribution systems to eliminate environmentally harmful farming methods, topsoil depletion, dependency on oil for fertilizers, pesticides, herbicides, production, harvesting, storage, transport, and distribution, overfishing, and habitat destruction.
6) Once we've done so while somehow managing to produce enough food to still feed everybody, figure out how to allocate and distribute our food production in a just and equitable fashion.
7) Convince the US government that hey, wars of aggression against small oil-producing nations that post no threat to Western Civilization really aren't cool.
8) Convince the jihadis to live in peace and harmony with the rest of us. This might require solving the Israeli/Palestinian problem first.
9) Convince the governments of the developed and developing worlds to take meaningful legislative action on environmental conservation in order to conserve biodiversity and habitat, both on land and in the water.
10) Convince the population of the developed worlds to change their consumption habits for the greener. Meaningfully, not just buying green-labelled versions of the same old crap in the supermarket. Convince everybody else to stop deforesting and otherwise exhausting resources and trashing their environments, even if it means abject poverty for them.
11) Convince the governments of the developing world to take meaningful legislative action on population growth.
12) Convince the population of the developing world to stop having quite so many kids.
That's a dozen unlikely to highly improbable things, and I'm not a character in a Lewis Carroll novel. I just cannot see all of the above happening anytime soon, and I really can't see us as a species waking up in time. If we're lucky, we'll hit the civilizational brick wall after we're dead.