A Limits to Growth Critique of the Radical Left: The Need to Embrace the Simpler Way

17 Comments on "A Limits to Growth Critique of the Radical Left: The Need to Embrace the Simpler Way"

Beery on Fri, 16th May 2014 6:20 am 



As an Anarchist – someone who hails from “The Radical Left”, I’m amused by the notion that all of these ideas are anathema to the radical left. Anarchists and communists have been arguing for these sorts of things for decades. In fact, we’ve been criticized for the very fact that our philosophies reject capitalism and consumerism. So I’m not sure where this is coming from, but it’s nonsense. I’m guessing that it’s either some wishy-washy liberal who’s just found that capitalism ain’t gonna work, or it’s some kind of libertarian nutcase who’s looking forward to dressing in leather clothing and living in the woods with his own private army.

Fellow Anarchist on Fri, 16th May 2014 6:29 am 



Ted Trainer is neither – and much of the radical left has no idea about energy and the central role it plays in the limits to growth.

Davy, Hermann, MO on Fri, 16th May 2014 6:43 am 



Article said – The Simpler Way vision is of an alternative which achieves this goal while liberating us to enjoy a higher quality of life. It involves mostly highly self-sufficient zero-growth local economies, self-governing via local participatory processes, driven by commitment to cooperation, stability, the common good, frugal lifestyles and non-material satisfactions.

Get a grip “Simpler way folks”. There is no managed de-growth from the top down. The best you can hope for is a little bottom up adaptation, mitigation, and preparation for the fall of the top down. The scale of what is ahead will swallow up your effort and spit it out like a chicken bone. Your thesis is as flawed as your critique of the radical left which is so far off the deep end as to be considered fiction. We know the conservative right is a fantasy of a fictional childlike world of miracles and human godliness. Any belief system that has knowledge, technology, and complex organizational structure at its core is doomed. The trend will be reactions of the bottom up to the actions of a disintegrating BAU. I will admit the “simpler way offers good plan B ideas for a general preparation, adaptation, and mitigation but forget a “way” as in a blue print for society as a whole. This global world is at limits of growth and facing diminishing returns. The population is in overshoot with the environment it depends upon sterilized. The “Simpler Way” is in reality a bottleneck and a break to a much lower standard of living. Your “Simpler Way” offers hope for a BAU alternative within the typical BAU structure of knowledge, technology, and complex organization to achieve an alternative complex culture all be it “Simpler”. It is too late for that because of population overshoot, energy constraints, unstable climate, and unavoidable bifurcation of the social fabric. The best we can hope for is a few life boats, some localized successful plan B’s, localized monasteries of Knowledge, and lots of luck for any survival. The similar way to be fair offers hope as opposed to my doom. I give it credit for that. I hope I am completely wrong. I hope at some point I can be laughed at and called crazy. I just cannot ignore reality and reality is screaming “bottleneck”

Beery on Fri, 16th May 2014 6:45 am 



I looked up the source PDF – this comes from Ted Trainer, a guy who advocates simple living, but whose homestead and lifestyle was initially funded (and partially maintained) from a very nice middle-class income. What Trainer fails to realize is that most people are living from paycheck to paycheck and, even if they wanted to, they cannot just uproot and buy an acre of land, install solar panels and spend months building their own self-sufficient compound. People need the money they earn just to eat on a daily basis. Unlike Dr. Trainer, most folks don’t have the luxury of having a few hundred thousand dollars saved up to make their personal utopia a reality.

I’d love to see Dr. Trainer explain to the millions of lower working class people in places like New York or London – that’s the vast majority of people on the Earth – people who are already living at basic subsistence level – that they need to live a simpler and more sustainable lifestyle.

Dave Thompson on Fri, 16th May 2014 7:21 am 



Most have no idea of what it takes for a simpler way of life. I collect rain water as of late here in suburbia and aside from the strange looks I get, man that water is heavy!

Davy, Hermann, MO on Fri, 16th May 2014 7:22 am 



So true Beer! I am one of those with money that can manage my life boat. I especially appreciate how hard it will be for many. In reality many will just be “cannon fodder” in the destruction of BAU. There is zero chance for many but then again none of us will get out of here alive. It may be better to go quick. I think about those things when I go to a funeral. Maybe this “Cat” died right by dyeing early so they do not suffer the horrors of the end of BAU. I on the other hand am preparing for the suffering as much as one can. When death is starring you in the face and you are not scared you are a saint or crazy…probably both. I am a PHD or sorts of doom, prepping, and the historic paradigm shift coming. So in a sense how this unfolds will fascinate me in my study of it even up to my final demise. My preparation may have been futile but they have been a passion. I have found my calling and nature. Beer is right, much of the preaching for many of these people will just ruin what they may have now and that is a semblance of hope or a relative degree of comfort. When you tell them all will be lost soon then what does a person have with nothing well he has depression. I realize a significant portion of the population is even worse off than “pay check to pay check” they are meal to meal! So Beer is right lets us recognize here where many of us our relatively well-off that some just don’t have “anything” to follow our preaching of preparation and in fact we may ruin what little they have. Even from a top down perspective can you blame TPTB for hiding the truth because of the resulting panic and chaos!

Kenz300 on Fri, 16th May 2014 7:22 am 



The worlds worst environmental problem is over population….. endless population growth is not sustainable and only leads to more poverty, suffering and despair.

Overpopulation facts – the problem no one will discuss: Alexandra Paul at TEDxTopanga – YouTube

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fNxctzyNxC0

Pops on Fri, 16th May 2014 7:26 am 



I’m not sure why the Left would be assumed to have a better handle on depletion than the right. As the guy points out, the redistributionist left and the Taxed Enough Already Right are fighting over the same money created for the most part by the same energy slaves.

But I think Beery is right in that Transition, localization, anti-capitalism blah blah are fashions adopted by relatively well off folks that really have no idea of the first thing about survival outside capitalism. It’s just that anti-capitalism is easy to adopt when one has already capitalized.

I used to hang at some of the “homestead” type bulletin boards and the discussion about which organic goat chow and hand knitted irish kitty sweater was the best was just too much. Ditto the promise of effortless bounty discovered by the latest guru if only one would pop for a $29.95 book.

My solution?
As the man said: “Collapse early and avoid the rush.”

simonr on Fri, 16th May 2014 8:52 am 



We are all little piggies fighting to get to the trough, the left and the right favour a section of the piggies. However no one is noticing the trough is shrinking.

Neither side is prepared.

Plantagenet on Fri, 16th May 2014 10:43 am 



The Left is quite capable of powering down a society. Look at what they did to Cuba….its gone from the richest country in Latin America to one of the poorest in just 50 years. Or compare socialist North Korea to capitalist South Korea—-the leftists in North Korea have done a splendid job of minimizing energy use. They even reduced food use to point that North Korea regularly has mass famines. If thats not a success for the leftists, then what is?

louis wu on Fri, 16th May 2014 10:56 am 



And the radical right or the right at all is embracing this simpler, lower consumption and energy usage, less materialistic lifestyle?

J-Gav on Fri, 16th May 2014 11:44 am 



Nice one Beery.

Not that all the “ideas” in Trainer’s ‘Simple Way’ are bad, just that 1 – They’re not new! and 2 – Implementing them would be a luxury that will forever remain inaccessible to the majority.

Cloud9 on Fri, 16th May 2014 8:49 pm 



I’m a little lost on this left right paradigm. Exactly how is the redistribution crowd different than the crony capitalist crowd? Each would simply select a different class of winners and losers. The real problem is that there is not enough. The man with the gun is going to decide who eats and who starves. It matters little to those being pushed away from the table what ideology the one doing the pushing subscribes to. For them, the end result is the same.

As the food crisis accelerates, I am sure that demagogues will mobilize the masses to strip those that have while they scapegoat segments of the population. At the end of the day, there is still not enough. The riots and chaos that they bring on will do nothing but hasten the collapse of fragile systems. All that any of us can hope for at this moment is that we and ours can somehow duck the shock wave headed towards us.

When the population drops below a billion people, the survivors may after a long dark age establish some social order.

Joe Clarkson on Fri, 16th May 2014 9:07 pm 



Whoa Pops, Let’s not be disparaging any kind of knitting. At least that is a craft that hasn’t changed in hundreds, if not thousands of years, and is perfectly appropriate for “survival outside capitalism”. How many skills do any of us macho men have that are as appropriate as knitting?

Davy, Hermann, MO on Fri, 16th May 2014 9:26 pm 



Cloud, both the left and right forget to include reality in their thought train. When your train of thought does not include limits to growth and diminishing returns then there is a problem. When recognition of overshoot is considered solvable with technology there is a problem. When nationalism disregards global interconnectedness we have a problem. On and On and On. The elites and or 1%ers left or right are a mixed bag but for the most part they have a distorted view of a status quo Bau that can be managed and this management includes continued growth through substitution, efficiency, increased technology and rising standards of living. All is well for these folks if you would just follow there line of thinking is their line of thinking.

Joe Clarkson on Sat, 17th May 2014 12:07 am 



Aloha Davy,

I like your comments, but for these old eyes, they are hard to read. It would help if you separated your paragraphs. Just a friendly suggestion.

Davy, Hermann, MO on Sat, 17th May 2014 6:03 am 



Yea, Joe, if only I could write and had more time. I am always trying to improve grammar, spelling and word placement. Sometimes I try an effect that does not include proper English to make an effect. You remind me of my mother…lol