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Crash on Demand with David Holmgren and Nicole Foss
Do we need to break the system to save the climate? Permaculture co-founder David Holmgren says “yes”, in rare radio interview. Then Nicole Foss replies. Plus Alex’s climate music.
Last week on Radio Ecoshock we looked at a growing group of activists, authors and scientists who say only a serious economic crash could save us from climate doom. Now we’ll talk with the man who started this flurry, the co-founder of the permaculture movement, Australian David Holmgren.
I’ll follow that up with reaction from Canadian finance and alternatives expert Nicole Foss. If you care about the future, this is radio you won’t want to miss.
Download/listen to this Radio Ecoshock show in CD Quality (54 MB) or Lo-Fi (14 MB)
DAVID HOLMGREN – DESPERATE MEASURES FOR DESPERATE TIMES
Despite the hopes and warnings of the last generation, humanity is heading for the darker path of more fossil fuel development. Today’s politicians are all about new pipelines, fracking, tankers, super coal mines and super coal ports, and of course endless oil.
It didn’t have to be that way. We had other choices, but now the co-founder of the Permaculture movement says “Welcome to the Brown Tech Future”. That train to climate disaster must be derailed for us to survive, he says, in a provocative essay called “Crash on Demand”.
When it comes to David Holmgren you’ve either heard of him in an almost reverent way, or you haven’t a clue. Along with Bill Mollison, David started the permaculture movement back in the 1970’s. He’s experimented with it ever since, from ecovillages and food forests to retrofitting suburbia. David is not a huge self-promoter. Outside of Australia, he’s known mainly by people seeking alternatives to the system of endless growth, and pitiless pillage of the land. Find his web site here.
Download/listen to this Radio Ecoshock interview with David Holmgren (25 minutes) in CD Quality or Lo-Fi
So what are we talking about? The co-founder of Permaculture is saying we can’t prevent a horrible collapse of the climate unless the current industrial-economic engine crashes. The only previous example of massive greenhouse gas reductions was when the Soviet Union collapsed in the 1990’s. That’s what it takes, Homlgren says.
This essay is part of a longer train of writings by Holmgren. He began with the book “Permaculture One” published in 1978, when David was 23, at the College of Advanced Education in Hobart, Tasmania. After experimenting with permaculture, from his own consulting firm, Holmgren updated the vision with the 2002 book “Permaculture: Principles and Pathways beyond Sustainability“. That’s still the best book on the subject, and fundamental to the permaculture movement world-wide.
In 2007, David published a long essay, which became a book, “Future Scenarios“. Based mainly on the expectation of peak oil, that work has the four descent senariois: Brown Tech, Green Tech, Earth Steward, and Lifeboats.
Future Scenarios, combining Peak Oil and Climate Change, was developed into a web site which fully explains his views. It’s a good place for anyone to start. Future Scenarios is also available as a book from Chelsea Green.
You can buy the book “Future Scenarios” here. Or read it free online at this web site.
The next link in Holmgren’s deep work came in 2009, with an analysis of the fatal marriage of the financial system to the fossil fuel energy industry.
Download David’s 2009 essay, which is part of this train of thought, and this Radio Ecoshock interview, “Money vs Fossil Energy: The battle for control of the world” from this web page.
Now we have “Crash on Demand, Welcome to the Brown Tech Future”.
Find “Crash on Demand” at this web site, or download it as a .pdf here.
In our interview, David says he suggested the four scenarios as short-term futures, possibly covering decades. Now he finds humanity has chosen one of the paths, the most deadly for the climate and ourselves, the “Brown Tech Future”. In it we find desperate measures like the Tar Sands, Oil Shale, and fracking.
Meanwhile, Holmgren explains these four scenarios can exist at the same time, nestled within one another. For example, while the Brown Tech future dominates the world financial system, more and more people are opting out either as Earth Stewards, or building personal and local “lifeboat” economies (like permaculture).
The founder of Transition Towns, Rob Hopkins, is critical of this new Holmgren stance. Rob thinks we can work through the existing system. For example, he wants to make sure local governments continue, so we have the organization needed to change in stages.
SHOULD WE BRING IT DOWN?
But is Holmgren really calling on us to actively cause a crash of the world financial system? He says the great weakness of the world economy is it is built on faith – our belief it is real and keeps on going. If enough of the world’s billion-or-so Middle Class stop believing, and remove their money and their working lives from the system, it will crash. It wouldn’t take much of a trigger to destabilize such a fragile system. Perhaps if just 5 percent of people opted out, it may go down, Holmgren postulates.
People close to David say he is not really calling for us to destabilize the current economy, other than to change away from it – toward the things he has been advocating for decades: form local economies, and change to “permaculture” – a permanent culture. It’s hard to nail David down on what he really means. I’m told he will be publishing a boil-down and clarification on his site in the next week or two. Look for that.
Meanwhile, in our radio interview, David points out he is far from alone in saying the system will crash, or need to do so. I’ve interviewed climate scientists, like Professor Tim Garrett from the University of Utah, who also calculate only a financial collapse could save us from unstoppable climate change. We talked about others in last week’s interview with Albert Bates. But there are also a huge number of bloggers and financial experts who say a severe correction is coming.
Here is just one example, from a thousand, of a middle class person who wants to help the system down, without any mention of climate change or peak oil.
If you want to know more, here is a You tube video series with David Holmgren.
Also, find another recent (Feb. 2014) interview with David on the show “21st Centruy Permaculture” on Shoreditch Community Radio (serving East London).
Read a response to David’s Crash on Demand article by Dmitri Orlov, author of “Five States of Collapse”. If we want to avoid “the climate cooker” as he calls it, David Holmgren says citizens can help tip the financial system over, by withdrawing money and investments, while living outside the consumer economy. Orlov does the math, and says there aren’t enough activist citizens to make any difference.
Part of the tumultuous reaction can be found in this article by KMO, host of the C-Realm Podcast (and check out the comments below the article)
NICOLE FOSS on HOLMGREN
Can we save ourselves from the worst of climate change by helping an unstable economic system to collapse? That’s the idea put forward by permaculture founder David Holmgren in his paper “Crash on Demand”.
Our next guest wrote a deep and provacative article about Holmgren, climate change, and a crash. She travels the world, from New Zealand to Europe, giving lectures – which are now available as a 4-hour DVD set.
Nicole has been a specialist in nuclear safety in the UK, and editor of the Peak Oil journal “The Oil Drum Canada”. Now she is co-editor at one of the Net’s more popular financial blogs, theautomaticearth.com, where she writes as “Stoneleigh”.
From her homestead in Ontario, Canada – we welcome Nicole Foss back to Radio Ecoshock.
Download/listen to this Radio Ecoshock interview with Nicole Foss in CD Quality or Lo-Fi
Read this essential essay about David Holmgren’s “Crash on Demand” by Nicole Foss.
Nicole knows David Holmgren well. Later this year, in July, she will tour Australia with him, in a series of lectures. In our interview she explains very well the “Crash on Demand” paper and the four scenarios.
Foss raises a two-fold objection to David’s idea of “Crash on Demand”. First, she says the system is so corrupt and unbalanced it will fall over by itself; and second, when it does, some people will blame the permaculture movement, for wrecking the system.
In her essay, and our interview, Nicole points us to a European expert on systems analysis and large-scale economics. That’s David Korowicz.
He’s written a paper titled “Trade-Off, Financial System Supply-Chain Cross-Contagion: a study in global systemic collapse.” How does Korowicz fit into our future? I hope to talk with him soon.
Essentially, Korowicz explains how a relatively simple trigger, whether it’s a deadly virus hitting Asian factories, or a combination of extreme weather events, could bring down everything we take for granted, much faster than anyone thinks. It could cascade into a major economic slow-down in a matter of weeks.
DON’T TALK ABOUT CLIMATE CHANGE?
In her response to Holmgren, and almost as an aside, Nicole Foss suggests maybe we should stop talking about climate change:
“The economic contraction that is coming is very likely to have a far more substantial impact on emissions than any deliberate policy or collective action. The combination of this contraction and constructive collective action could be very powerful indeed, but achieving the latter action is not best done on the grounds of climate change. The same actions that would best address climate change in the aggregate are also the prescription for dealing with financial crisis and peak oil – hold no debt, consume less, relocalize, increase community self-sufficiency, reduce dependency on centralized life-support systems.
The difference is that both financial crisis and peak oil are far more personal and immediate than climate change, and so are far bigger motivators of behavioural change. For this reason, addressing arguments in these terms is far more likely to be effective. In other words, the best way to address climate change is not to talk about it.”
At first that seems outrageous. But you must read the full essay, and listen to this interview.
Essentially, Nicole worries that fear of climate change, once realized by the public, could drive us towards even worse outcomes. For example, we may demand immediate action to save us from the (drought, heat wave, floods, fires) – leading to geoengineering pollution that hides emissions and makes everything worse. Or we may demand/allow a new type of eco-fascism – command and control state regulating every part of our lives (perhaps combined with the new spy state). And, as now, we can count on a gang of billionaires to cook up schemes that don’t work but enrich themselves.
Why risk all that, Foss argues, when people can move toward a more sustainable lifestyle driven simply by concerns about a collapsing economy and peak energy? I disagree of course, and will continue to communicate about climate change in the Radio Ecoshock show.
Humanity is up against a novel and horrific set of problems, (energy, economy, overpopulation, nuclear disaster,climate change). We need a wide range of proposals and thought before we find any way out. That means tolerance and respect among ourselves, for a diversity of speakers and opinions. People who are so sure they are right, and everyone who disagrees is wrong, to the point of calling others “traitors”, “idiots” and the like – are just weakening the whole discussion, and our possibilities. It’s sad to see intellectual tyrants ranting at low levels, but I suppose the stress of our unwinding makes this inevitable from some people.
21 Comments on "Crash on Demand with David Holmgren and Nicole Foss"
Davy, Hermann, MO on Tue, 11th Feb 2014 4:16 pm
So much to cover in this one. We have dealt with many of these ideas already. My interjection is small. Forcing collapse is an option but it is like an unproven medical treatment that has a high probability of death. I think the transition folks are just as blind as the technological folks to reality. Over shoot of a species carrying capacity is what it is. We can see the results in science both in theory and history. I see all effort in the wide range of “ideologies of survival” as flawed with respect to natural law. The best we can do is adapt, mitigate, and adjust attitudes to a soon to be new paradigm. This paradigm is one of contraction and collapse for which modern human thought has no tradition. We have been growing more or less for 10000 years. “YET” the Human tradition is much older than this. From DNA we see the indications of bottlenecks. Modern thought will not have the time to adjust or analysis this new intellectual climate. We are trying to shove a circle into a square. I tend to find the transition people more agreeable to me at least they admit like J-Gav says “Houston we have a problem” “BUT” this is not to say we should not try and should not live fully now. For what is life if you are paralyzed by fear and anxiety for a tomorrow we really do not understand. When will this overshoot end modern man? I may walk outside in an hour and a tree limb will fall and kill me.
Northwest Resident on Tue, 11th Feb 2014 4:24 pm
As I’ve opined on this blog several times, securing strategic assets, crashing BAU, waiting for the smoke to clear, then rebooting human civilization with a much smaller population and a much smarter usage of our limited energy supply is the ONLY thing that makes sense.
As pointed out in this article, climate change must be slowed down or halted immediately if survival of the human race long term on planet earth is a goal — and I bet it is.
Not only climate change. Every day we continue BAU, we WASTE precious finite resources. BAU is nothing but PURE WASTE. Sure, BAU keeps seven billion people eating and sheltered. But BAU is unsustainable — most of those seven billion people are gonners anyway — why waste more irreplaceable finite resources to stretch this nightmare out any longer than is needed? Let’s just get it over with — cut bait, take the losses, wake up to a new beginning.
Whether tis nobler in the mind to suffer the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune or to take arms against a sea of troubles and by so doing END them. — some dude named Shakespeare. Point is, do we just keep muddling forward, living with the problems, or do we resolutely grab that evil monkey by the neck and choke it to death? The answer seems clear to me — and it must seem clear to certain elite members of “TPTB Club”. Look for the curtain to fall on this act of human civilization in the not-too-distant future.
rollin on Tue, 11th Feb 2014 4:34 pm
Just stop investing in junk or things that tie a person into monthly charges.
Buy what is necessary to live, invest (buy) things that will help you now and in the future. Insulation, warm clothing, food, garden tools, seeds, efficient lighting, PV, etc.
Do you really need that new computer, big screen tv, next gen video camera?
Just cutting out luxury items, repairing items will take a big chunk out of the economy and help pay for needed items to prepare for the future.
Support products that help, keep your money concerning glitz and thrills. That will make a difference.
J-Gav on Tue, 11th Feb 2014 5:55 pm
Rollin – That’s sound advice ; as is Davy’s “adapt, mitigate and adjust attitudes,” and his call to live life now, without fear to the extent possible, and admitting we don’t really know exactly what tomorrow will bring.
NW takes a somewhat more radical stance here, closer to what I would have said when I was a bit younger … But “crashing BAU” is easier said than done. And, as Holmgren points out in the audio, his position is more nuanced than many have interpreted. He doesn’t say: “Come on folks, let’s bring this sucker down, NOW!” That would lead to his position being blamed for a heap ‘o trouble and put it clearly in the sights of official reprisals. Flying under the radar might be a better idea -or, As Orlov recently suggested, becoming ‘illegible’ for power structures, if not completely invisible.
J-Gav on Tue, 11th Feb 2014 6:22 pm
Nicole Foss’s provocative words on climate change are interesting too. Reading the essay makes it clear there are some valid reasons to stake out that line. Though of course it’s potentially the ultimate game-changer, people will have enough on their plate getting used to energy depletion and economic contraction. Harping on the possible end-game dimension of that beast could cause panic and a resort to dubious geo-engineering ‘solutions’ being forced down our throats … All complex stuff, eh? Anyway, thanks Alex and Ecoshock Radio for stimulating the conversation.
Northwest Resident on Tue, 11th Feb 2014 6:40 pm
J-Gav — Me? Radical stance?! No way…
Your points are all well-taken. And I can see how my position probably does look radical. But just to make sure I haven’t confused anybody, let me clarify.
I believe that BAU should be purposefully crashed WHEN and only when strategic assets (oil production/refinery sites, nuclear sites, scientists and oil/nuclear industry workers, etc…) have been secured. It makes logical sense to crash BAU IF there is a plan and a group of elites in position to manage and oversee an enlightened rebirth of human civilization once all the smoke clears. Just crashing BAU without a plan, without securing strategic assets and without any vision of what the “next act” of human civilization might look like would be almost as stupid and pointless as stringing the current version of BAU out to the bitter end, wasting all finite resources and leaving a toxic and overheated climate for future humans to scratch a living in.
J-Gav on Tue, 11th Feb 2014 8:05 pm
NW – Thanks for the additional comments. I agree 100% that watching BAU continue its devastating romp across the planet is an enraging and heart-breaking spectacle. Up against that, we’re left with an unpleasant choice, assuming there really is one: “taking arms against a sea of troubles,” where the odds frankly don’t look good what with ultra-surveillance, militarized police forces, a shredded Constitution etc. or “muddling” as you put it. I can’t say I like either option (maybe there’s another one?)but the way things have taken shape, it seems to me that muddling might actually be the more viable strategy. That is, after all, what permaculturists, transitioners etc are already doing on the margins of the mainstream. Granted that will take some time to reach any sort of critical mass but, in the meantime, those who have already been fighting that fight for a while will be in a better position to confront whatever comes along.
Northwest Resident on Tue, 11th Feb 2014 8:56 pm
J-Gav — As a pro software developer, I frequently run into “legacy” code. That code is usually a hodgepodge of code that has been hammered together by numerous programmers over a long period of time, and the only reason I’m looking at it is because it is a big mess that doesn’t work anymore, or is incapable of being modified to bring it up to date. My inclination in those situations is to pull out the parts that work and can be retrofitted to work in the newer and much better code that I’m going to put together, and TRASH the rest. Maybe I’m subconsciously applying my programming experience to the situation we are faced with in the world today???
Regardless, nobody will ever convince me that it is better to continue BAU for any amount of time than is longer than needed to make full preparations to bring it all to an end and reboot. Each day of BAU brings fresh extinctions of species, more toxic waste dumped, more CO2 pumpted into the atmosphere, more forests mowed down, more water polluted, more finite resources wasted on useless gadgets and happy motoring to the local burger joint and back — more of everything that is really bad about BAU. It is time to bring this version of BAU to an end. There are a lot of good reasons to get it done sooner rather than later, and as you mention, some good reasons to carry on for another two or three years or so. But if BAU were a computer program and I was the one assigned to “fix it”, I would have deleted that sucker yesterday and felt good doing it.
rollin on Tue, 11th Feb 2014 9:33 pm
There is always the catch. Are we going to act like the current raving savages that are destroying the earth by bringing down BAU too quickly and hurting or killing a couple of billion people. Or are we going to start acting like responsible caretakers and thoughtfully shift into a newer positive mode of existence with as little harm as possible to the current world.
We either start acting properly or the whole thing will crash no matter what we try to do. No amount of justification will change that.
GregT on Tue, 11th Feb 2014 11:13 pm
“Are we going to act like the current raving savages that are destroying the earth by bringing down BAU too quickly and hurting or killing a couple of billion people. Or are we going to start acting like responsible caretakers and thoughtfully shift into a newer positive mode of existence with as little harm as possible to the current world.”
If I may take a crack at this one.
If we started powering down society yesterday, and put all of our ‘energy and resources’ into doing so, there is no possible way to stop the ‘hurting or killing’ of a couple of billion people, or more. If we continue on with what we are doing presently for a couple more decades, it looks very likely that we will kill off most, if not all life on the planet. We might very well be too late already.
The crash is coming, voluntarily or not. One future is dire, the other is terminal. If I was in the upper echelons, I know what my choice would be. There are many ways to implement such a strategy, and although I have my suspicions, I have no idea as to exactly what the plan might be. If they don’t have a plan, our species is toast. The end.
kervennic on Tue, 11th Feb 2014 11:57 pm
The economical system does not need us. If we do not like it and want to retrieve, we will be retrieved and replaced.
I quitted my job, I have been replaced the day after. That is no problem for the system.
Holmgren is wrong. It is very hard to collapse a system that is still on its feet because there is a huge number of human working day and night to fix the problem that arouse day after day.
The system will not collapse at ounce in the sense that it will resist its own defeating to the end. This is why nicole floss is also wrong. It will change and adapt and will not behave in what she think is a rational way. Because what is rational to her is not the rationality of a system as a whole. Nature does not care about individuals, society as a whole is not afraid of massive die out and sacrifices. History is full of example.
But there is one real thruth: if 5% start not only to retrieve but to risk their life and grossly disobey, because they really do not care about their own future and the social moral that has been nailed down into their brain, then the system is completely fucked. This system only function because 99 % of people do not commit offenses and that 1 % can be jailed. 5 % cannot be jailed, they have to be killed, and that is not so easy.
Revolution and demise has always come from the same origin: once life becomes too shitty, nobody cares anylonger. Actually it is boiling right now in many part of the world.
Isn’t all the smart thinking a way to hide the necessary confrontation. As long as we do not feel like confronting, than we have to accept to be slaved and that the victors scrap our earrth to the rock.
J-Gav on Wed, 12th Feb 2014 12:00 am
GregT – I don’t think they do have a plan, beyond BAU that is … I’m not sure people realize how moronic these sociopaths are, other than their keen ability to channel wealth into their own pockets. They certainly can’t be counted on to ‘save’ anything of value.
That’s why the plan has to come from somewhere else … and it’s already happening, but at an excruciatingly slow pace given what’s at stake.
I’m in near total agreement with all above comments but the ‘near’ comes from my skepticism concerning any head-to-head confrontation with TPTB. Only bottom-up realism can save ‘something,’ even if we can’t know precisely what that might be. In the end we’re all toast anyway, but wouldn’t it be nice if we could instill in our children and grand-children a desire and a will to prolong our human sojourn here as long as possible.
NW – The thing is that you assume that ‘we’ have the ability bring it down. We all know it’s coming down from its own obese stupidity at some point but how to hasten that without actually making matters worse? That’s one of the points I think Holmgren has been referring to recently. Once collapse is underway, what comes out the other end?
Makati1 on Wed, 12th Feb 2014 1:19 am
My analogy of civilization in 2014 is that we are like a huge super tanker steaming across the ocean fully loaded with oil. I have estimates of 45 minutes to 1 hour to make a 180 degree turn and at least a mile wide circle. Current civilization is like that ship. Inertia will take decades to turn around what we are doing today. The only fast change would be where the proverbial irresistible force hits the immovable object but the resulting explosion would be gigantic. What the immovable object could be is not known, but a sudden collapse of the financial system could be it. Or war.
It also takes about 15 to 30 minutes to stop the above ship if the captain decided to do so. We have not even considered slowing down, let alone stopping our destruction of the earth’s life support system.
I think, that we are lucky if the year 2200 sees more than a few million people left and an 18th century lifestyle for the survivors.
Northwest Resident on Wed, 12th Feb 2014 5:50 am
“I’m not sure people realize how moronic these sociopaths are, other than their keen ability to channel wealth into their own pockets.”
I don’t know, J-Gav. We’re talking about TPTB here. I’m pretty sure that 9/11, the resulting “war on terror” and the Iraq war were all successfully planned and executed by TPTB, with the goal of securing the major oil production centers in the Middle East — and as far as I can tell, it went down like clockwork. They are now in control. That doesn’t look like the work of morons to me. It does look like the cold, calculating, ruthless and Machiavellian actions of some very determined and organized power-players who know how to get things done. That same group could put an end to BAU and set off global collapse at any time of their choosing, if that’s what they wanted to do. Question is, do they? I like to believe that their top priority is the survival of the human race and the maintenance of their positions of power and leadership. Given those two priorities, they have no choice but to bring BAU to an end in the near future, wait for the smoke to clear, and re-launch civilization on a much more sustainable path. If they just wait for BAU to consume all resources, destroy the climate and finally collapse on its own due to lack of energy input, then they will have lost everything, and so will have humanity’s only chance at long term survival on planet earth.
Mark Ziegler on Wed, 12th Feb 2014 3:03 pm
The sun is active and has many sunspots.
http://www.spaceweather.com/
It is doubtful the sunspots have any effect on the weather other than shutting down the power grid.
Makati1 on Wed, 12th Feb 2014 3:19 pm
NWR, have you considered that most of those in real positions of power are over 70 years old? Many are over 60 and a few may be in their 50s. What do they have to lose? All of them will be dead by 2050 or sooner.
Northwest Resident on Wed, 12th Feb 2014 4:22 pm
Makati1 — Kings are intensely concerned with passing their kingdom on to their heirs. Kings do not simply say “heck with it — I’m going to be dead soon enough and I don’t care what happens after that.” Ruling clans engage in legendary and epic struggles to determine the order of succession. For a man or woman with immense power, one of the top priorities is (almost) always “who will I pass my power on to”. Wealthy individuals spend fortunes on legal fees to control who gets what after their passing, and to appoint the next-in-line. Passing the torch is something that those with immense power and wealth contemplate ALL the time. Thinking that those in power are sitting around idly and foolishly thinking “got mine, screw it” is ascribing a selfishness and a lack of concern about their legacy that is not correct, IMO.
J-Gav on Wed, 12th Feb 2014 8:58 pm
Northwest – I don’t pretend to know everything either re: TPTB … and I agree with your latest comment. But “cold and calculating” and “moronic” are not mutually exclusive for me. Because I think the calculations are generally quite short-term. They take action, watch what happens, get together and talk, then move again, all in their own interests. There’s the rub. If avoiding the trashing of the planet really was one of their major concerns, they would have already acted more decisively on it, don’t you think? That’s what I call moronic.
Northwest Resident on Wed, 12th Feb 2014 10:08 pm
J-Gav — I also do not pretend to know everything regarding TPTB or their intentions or plans. I do spend time trying to interpret and make sense out of the swirling maelstrom of lies, fraud, propaganda and seemingly senseless national and geopolitical events that are defining the world we live in. Guys like rockman deal in hard cold facts. Not me. I take what cold hard facts the experts lay on the table, take the collection of world events being reported, then try to arrange those all into a cohesive jigsaw puzzle that makes sense to me. Then I add a healthy heaping of what I know of hereditary human nature — the desire to survive, the desire to play a positive role in human development, the desire to leave a legacy that last long after we’re gone, all of which I ascribe to TPTB. Then I write a post that depicts what I think I am seeing. In other words, I don’t know a damn thing. I’m just speculating and postulating, trying to make sense out of a very nonsensical situation. For all I know, BAU will go on forever, TPTB have a totally efficient and economically efficient replacement for fossil fuel oil that their scientists have developed in secret and they are preparing to announce it to the world any day now, etc… In answer to your question, wouldn’t they have acted more decisively on it by now? All I can say — guessing again — is that maybe from that high perch they sit on, overlooking the world and the billions of ant-like people crawling around on it, the level of pollution and climate change that we have induced so far is a tolerable trade-off to the time they need to fully get their ducks in order. But that’s just more speculation, which is all I’ve got.
J-Gav on Wed, 12th Feb 2014 11:03 pm
NW – Well, speculation is a fair part of most of what anybody’s got (not talking finance here). That’s why I’m trying to move out of this damn city and get my arthritic hands back in the dirt where they belong. Ain’t easy.
Northwest Resident on Wed, 12th Feb 2014 11:17 pm
J-Gav — I imagine at some point in the far distant past, one of our ancestors got a tingling sensation up and down his spine, stuck his nose into the air and intuitively knew that he had to run for it. So he did, while all or most the others just looked around at each other, or hooted derisively at him for being afraid of his own shadow. And millennia later, here we are descended from that ancestor who knew to trust his intuition, but there are no descendants of the others because they didn’t make it. It was a jolt of fear and intuitive sense of something is very wrong that lead me to find my way to the oil drum, where my fears were confirmed. If we don’t trust our gut instincts and intuitions, then we are even less likely to come through all this to the other side — and the odds aren’t all that good to start with IMO.