[Ibon]

I have been increasingly suspicious over the past couple of years that we may never get to this collective epiphany moment when modern humans wake up to the perils of resource depletion, over population, environmental degradation and the need to change our unsustainable lifestyles. Of course geology and reality will finally impose itself on humans in denial and we will be forced to consume less and live within constraints. But does this automatically mean that we will wake up to a collective epiphany experience of why this has happened and how we allowed ourselves to get there? Will these imposed resource constraints really bring the dawn of cultural transformation toward more sustainability as a cultural objective or will we just readjust to lowered expectations but still run around as the same stupid monkeys that we are, always have been and always will be?

What is the evidence out there that the arrival of ecological limits and energy limits will force a collective wake up in human societies?

None that I see. I'm losing faith in Peak oil and related environmental limits being a catalyst for change. I just don't see it happening and I fear that I projected on to that Peak Oil bell curve some similar bell curve where human ignorance represents the ascending part of the curve leading to a collective wake up at peak and a cultural transformation on the descent. There really is no evidence that this will be the case.

[Jack]

Stupid monkeys? If only humanity were that intelligent. No, humankind is more closely akin to a yeast colony.

Scarcity and privation are not going to bring out the best. Rather, they will bring forth the beast - red in tooth and claw, ravening and ripping. You will see mindless rage in those who had plenty, and now will not.

It seems that, in the end, we have come to equivalent conclusions. When two people with perspectives as different as ours wind up at the same intellectual destination, it says something.

I suppose I should wind up with something that purports to be profound. How's this?

Then hail, horrors, and thou profoundest Hell, receive thy new possessor! (Milton, Paradise Lost).

[turmoil]

No, I agree, the likelihood of an epiphany on a species-wide scale is low if not null. But a culture is essentially the decisions people make. Buying lower on the food chain for instance could be an economic or philosophical choice, but each choice regardless of the cause makes up the whole body of choices. The topic of discussion will change from blaming oil companies and OPEC to how we are using less fuel to get around. Whoever figures out how to use less will have a better standard of living and quality of life, and even bragging rights. It's why insect species have survived for millions. They get by on nothing.

Excess becomes poverty vs luxury.

[halcyon]

A futurologist looking back in history would say, that at the time when almost everybody has abandoned almost all hope of any kind of zeitgeist change, that is usually the point when the change start to roll forward at fast forward speed.

I don't think we are there yet.

We need more climate porn and definitely a few big and long lasting energy shake ups and some war, before we are there yet.

Then, maybe then, the prevailing understanding, mood and paradigms can start changing rapidly.

However, prediction is a tricky business, especially that of the future.

[Fishman]

Unlikely we'll change. History such as Europe during the 1300s found a population that couldn't produce enough food, malnurishment, then disease. Many were blamed. There was no enlightenment that there must be fewer people. The only difference now is at least some advanced science, (maybe more a blind faith in science).

[roccman]

There have been countless wake up calls for mankind...each one ignored.

Oh well...so it goes.

[ohanian]

Relax!
When the last polar bear dies
People will wake up.



"...Unless the Almighty maker them ordain

His dark materials to create more worlds".

[mark]

We are bound by our origins, for as long as we depend solely on our own mind.

Our choices are limited as well by a simple fact; there are too many of us for the planet to sustain. There is no “nice” way to eliminate 2/3’s of us.

How did this condition arise? We fed on the stored bounty of millions of years without wisdom. And without wisdom our future is assured.

Our hope as a species is the awakening power of scattered small groups made up of people who have achieved a higher consciousness. See Paul Hawken’s new book, Blessed Unrest.

Our goal is not to achieve an awakening of us all but to align ourselves with these groups, or start your own. In some distant future, the remnants of the petroleum age will begin the long assent to a new civilization, one fraught with its own problems save one, it will be sustainable.

[Twilight]

Has mankind ever collectively experienced anything? There's your answer.

[EnergyUnlimited]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Ibon', '
')What is the evidence out there that the arrival of ecological limits and energy limits will force a collective wake up in human societies?

None that I see.

[Ludi]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('EnergyUnlimited', 'I') would say that it is Nature's design to ensure that species are not caring about their environment and attempting to exploit it to its limits.

[bshirt]

I agree...the biggest problem is civilization itself.

Have we "really" progressed since hunter/gatherers?

[Iaato]

I have some faith that as succession and reversion to carrying capacity go on, that for the most part, surviving humans will be those tough, adaptable, intelligent individuals who are ready for a new culture of living in the land, within limits. Unless we blow up the world first.

I've been watching Meerkat Manor discs this month for hoots. The Whiskers Meerkats are matriarchal, and mom Meerkat limits population growth in the 3 square mile territory fairly rigorously by limiting who gets to raise children to adulthood. If Meerkats can figure it out, maybe we can.

[Revi]

We'll be falling back to the village economy. Is there any village economy left in the US? Anyway, it's going to be a much more meagre existence for most people. I've been reading The Collapse of Complex Societies and it seems like a lot of societies have lived through what we are about to experience now. The Mayans were not particulaly enlightened by their collapse. They had city after city fall, and the refugees probably died.

[BigTex]

Mankind is like the frog in the pan of water, slowly heating up.

When resource depletion begins to be obvious, some "tribes" will adopt prudent measures to manage resources more effectively. However, the neighbor tribes may not be so forward-thinking and will simply run out. Once the neighbor tribe runs out of critical resources, it will attack the tribe with the well-designed conservation and resource management programs and basically loot the resources, or the two tribes will battle to a stalemate or the conservationist tribe will win.

This process will play out over and over and over until all of the tribes have exhausted themselves from battling over resources that are becoming ever scarcer and humanity will then begin to take large steps backwards, still fighting until there are tribes of cavemen fighting over firewood.

For those who believe that an orderly transition can be made from the dogma of endless growth of everything to a system of sustainability on a global scale......enjoy your revelry.......

.......you will weep when the future arrives.

If you put your preconceptions down for a moment and just think honestly about the way people have always acted at the group, tribe, society, culture and nation levels when critical resources were at stake, it is obvious that any dash for declining supplies will not be a high-minded fishes and loaves kind of thing.

It will be ugly.

Is there anything we can do about it? Not really, other than token mitigation efforts at the local and perhaps national level. It will of course be some consolation to be on the "winning" side early in the contest for resources, but when conflict erupts, violence is typically met with more violence, which forms a downward spiral, exhausting both winners and losers eventually.

The best approach is probably to try to reduce personal consumption as much as possible, be a good leader and role model for those around you, and try not to worry about it too much.

The lion looking regally out across his domain without fear isn't troubled by the fact that his descendants will probably all live in zoos. The fact that our descendants will suffer a similar fall from grace shouldn't trouble us excessively today. Seek a happy and peaceful life, enjoying what life has to offer and finding your fullest expression. If you want to save the world, give it a try. If you want to change human nature, go for it. Change as many minds as you can, but remember that one life is not that long, and spending it lamenting human stupidity or living in a future tense global disaster may not be the best use of YOUR time and energy.

Remember that in human history being right about something ahead of the masses often gets you banished, ridiculed, or worse.

[Ludi]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Revi', ' ')The Mayans were not particulaly enlightened by their collapse. They had city after city fall, and the refugees probably died.

[Ferretlover]

In the mood that I am in today, my perception would be a resounding NO!
People are stupid, stupid, stupid.
Even after TSHTF, when resources are rare or completely gone, the planet continues to cook or drown communities and countries, war severely damages or destroys countries, economies fail.... there will STILL be many people who don't have a clue what has happened, why it happened, or what to do about it. One by one they will die not knowing.
Stupid, stupid, stupid people!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! What have we done???

[Iaato]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Ferretlover', 't')here will STILL be many people who don't have a clue what has happened, why it happened, or what to do about it. One by one they will die not knowing.
Stupid, stupid, stupid people!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! What have we done???

[billp]

We believe in action. Not more words.

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', 'T')his is serious business.

Nojeh Coup

In July 1980, Zbigniew Brzezinski of the United States met Jordan's King Hussein in Amman to discuss detailed plans for Saddam Hussein to sponsor a coup in Iran against Khomeini. King Hussein was Saddam's closest confidant in the Arab world, and served as an intermediary during the planning. The Iraqi invasion of Iran would be launched under the pretext of a call for aid from Iranian loyalist officers plotting their own uprising on July 9, 1980 (codenamed Nojeh, after Shahrokhi/Nojeh air base in Hamedan). The Iranian officers were organized by Shapour Bakhtiar, who had fled to France when Khomeini seized power, but was operating from Baghdad and Sulimaniyah at the time of Brzezinski's meeting with Hussein. However, Khomeini learned of the Nojeh Coup plan from Soviet agents in France and Latin America. Shortly after Brzezinski's meeting with Hussein, the President of Iran, Abolhassan Bani-Sadr quietly rounded up 600 of the loyalist plotters within Iran, putting an effective end to the Nojeh Coup.[5] Saddam decided to invade without the Iranian officers' assistance, beginning the Iran-Iraq war on 22 September 1980.
because

In The Longest War: The Iran-Iraq Military Conflict by Dilip Hiro states on the cover text,

How was Iraq - at a 3 to 1 disadvantage in population - able to sustain an eight year war and arm one-tenth of its entire population? ... It had been a bloody and expensive conflict. Conservative Western estimate put the total number of war dead at 367,000 - Iran accounting for 262,000 and Iraq 105,000. With more than 70,000 injured, the total casualties were put at over million. The official figures, given a month later by minister of Islamic guidance in a radio interview, put the Iranian dead at 123,220 combatants, and another 60,711 missing in action. In addition 11,000 civilians had lost their lives. Tehran's total of nearly 200,000 troops and civilians killed was in stark contrast to Bagdad's estimate of 800,000 Iranian dead." page 250.

[Nicholai]

Nope, people are reactionary. Germany needed to attack Poland for the world to respond. We needed plagues to give us reason to develop sanitation. We are a reactionary species and don't forget it.