Those of us who have some grasp of the urgent dilemmas posed by climate change and peak oil face a terrible conundrum. The whole system of industrial civilization is moving toward collapse. How can we reverse course to avert an unprecedented series of crises that might entail massive human mortality and the more or less permanent crippling of planetary ecosystems? I can think of two broad strategies:

Top down. Convince the folks in charge that it’s in their interest to change direction—that is, to reorganize financial, food, transport, and manufacturing systems on a no-growth, low-carbon model. Advantage: this audience at least theoretically has the power to organize a comprehensive and rapid energy descent. Recall the rapidity with which the US re-organized its economy at the start of World War II. Disadvantages: the elites’ incentives are all in the current direction of growth-at-any-cost, many of the key players remain in denial about the nature and severity of the fundamental problems facing society, and social systems are structured to eject leaders who rock the boat.

Bottom up. Convince the general public to organize a change in direction from the grassroots. Communities could self-organize to lower energy consumption, create green jobs, and localize their economies. Advantage: this avoids the authoritarianism implicit in the first strategy. Disadvantages: it’s almost impossible to reach all or most of the general public unless you have a huge megaphone (which leads us back to the Top-Down strategy), the general public does not have the capability to quickly restructure large complex systems (finance, manufacturing, transport, etc.), and most people identify their personal interests with those of the collapsing system.

Transition Initiatives are making a valiant effort at a bottom-up strategy. Various prominent environmentalists have pursued a top-down strategy (most recently, PCI Fellow Bill Rees has published an important paper titled “Avoiding Collapse,” a last-ditch effort to awaken global policy makers).

It’s not at all clear that either strategy will succeed. If anyone can think of a third broad strategic approach, there are lots of us who would be keen to know of it.

Meanwhile, the least helpful thing I can think of to do right now is to identify with either the Top Down or the Bottom Up approach and then attack people pursuing the complementary strategy. Of course, tactics within these broad categories are always up for discussion and it’s fair to point out instances of incompetence in the application of tactics. But if we do have a chance at averting the worst forms of societal and ecosystem collapse, that chance probably lies in cooperation among actors pursuing different but complementary strategies.

21 Comments on "Heinberg: Bottom Up, Top Down"

paulo1 on Fri, 20th Jun 2014 1:23 pm 



re statement: “Of course, tactics within these broad categories are always up for discussion and it’s fair to point out instances of incompetence in the application of tactics.”

dysfunctional and hated houses of Govt. (both Congress and Senate) and an inept President with little or no credibility left to draw upon should have no problem instigating change. Right? Right? Anyone? Anyone?

Change will be done by individuals. Change will be noticed locally and copied. Some will be sucessful but most will continue blindly following an out dated paradigm. There will be unrest and more police state measures imposed. That is what different and cmplimentary strategies will look like, imho.

regards..Paulo

Northwest Resident on Fri, 20th Jun 2014 1:25 pm 



“How can we reverse course to avert an unprecedented series of crises that might entail massive human mortality and the more or less permanent crippling of planetary ecosystems?”

Or, to rephrase the question, how do you stop a gigantic herd of lemmings from walking in lock-step right over the edge of the cliff?

Answer: You can’t stop it — nobody can. Why? Because they are fucking lemmings. Individual lemmings may be “smart”, but taken as an entire population, that lemming herd is exceedingly stupid, easily manipulated, extremely opposed to any kind of changes that impact them adversely (i.e., must work for a living including physical labor, can no longer drive to McD’s for breakfast lunch and dinner, etc…).

The elites who run the show most certainly recognize that it is impossible to change the basic behaviors of billions of people without inducing absolute chaos and mayhem.

Therefore, the only logical solution is to sit and wait for the lemmings to self-destruct, then pick up the pieces and carry on.

I see almost everything that is happening in the world today on the international level through the lens of “preparing for life during and after collapse”. Without explicitly stating what they are up to, governments and industries and elites around the world are making their preparations, knowing the “Avoiding Collapse” is a NO-GO proposition. “Surviving Collapse” is the only thing worth working for and preparing for these days — it is the only logical long term plan.

tinyteatree on Fri, 20th Jun 2014 1:48 pm 



In my opinion all current mainstream efforts to avert collapse. Be it by going “Greener” or developing new technologies to devour our earths resources, only serve to delay the inevitable. And yet, very few have identified the source of the current state of momentum. In the end it does not matter how much you recycle or what your presidents opinion is on bio fuels. The source of mankind’s trajectory is the abstinent effort to exponentially grow on a finite planet. The result of which 7+ Billion people exist today. Ironically it is the egoistic desire to exist and prosper, inherit in every one of us, that will cause mortality and destitution.

Theoretically on paper, we could, reach a sublime state of sustainability with nature, using only green renewable energy, without lowering quality of life of people, or killing anyone. But for that people have to bond and unity in such a harmony and cooperation, that Jesus himself will come to live amongst us. However for now, we are all participation in the race to expunge our precious little earth.

Bill on Fri, 20th Jun 2014 1:56 pm 



What is required at an individual level is voluntary Peak Oil. Everyone needs to move towards minimum consumption of anything that requires a carbon based fuel to exist. It will not be good for today’s economy but it is required for whatever economy we have tomorrow because it is required for tomorrow.

J-Gav on Fri, 20th Jun 2014 2:01 pm 



Neither of the ‘strategies’ outlined in the article will prevent a collapse of considerable proportions, even though the bottom-up approach is obviously the only one liable to bring some communities through in less-terrible conditions – the upper echelons don’t give a flying F0#ock about the hoi-polloi and never will.

Again, no-one can say with certainty exactly how far and how fast things are going to fall apart. The critical issue will be whether or not convergences come into play – as in financial/economic disarray (1 year? 5 years? Who knows? but I doubt it will be longer), potentially coupled with biodiversity collapse, or tripled with (possibly nuclear) war, or even quadrupled with climate change acceleration … The list isn’t finished but I’ll stop there.

Paradoxically, people will need to become both more humble in the overall scheme of things regarding nature and the universe, and at the same time more reactive/proactive at the survival level.

When BAU goes tits-up, don’t expect the elites to suddenly become your friends.

Perk Earl on Fri, 20th Jun 2014 2:25 pm 



“Individual lemmings may be “smart”, but taken as an entire population, that lemming herd is exceedingly stupid, easily manipulated, extremely opposed to any kind of changes that impact them adversely”

I agree NWR, but think what happens is the average lemming acquiesces to TPTB regarding policies because it is easier not to share in the responsibility of those decisions. I’ve heard people say, “Whatever they decide is fine by me.” They do this purposefully so day to day they can be ignorant and lazy in regards to those decisions, and if anything goes wrong there’s someone to blame other than themselves.

What those lemmings don’t understand is TPTB set themselves and their families up with contingency plans that even include govt. bunkers with drums full of food and water. Since they have somewhere to go they are willing to push this paradigm as far as it will go knowing the longer it lasts the longer they hold power and can add to their golden parachutes.

“I see almost everything that is happening in the world today on the international level through the lens of “preparing for life during and after collapse”. It does seem like for example here in the US and many parts of the EU, preparations are being made to fight riots. It’s pretty obvious that once things descend to a certain point people will riot over food insecurity. Some food will get doled out I think to reduce reactive behavior, but also to slowly drop the caloric intake so the masses become weak over time. Once the lemmings are weak and starving, then all TPTB need to do is wait until the numbers have been culled, then step forward with a new plan. They will say something like, “Our great country has been through one of the worse episodes in it’s history, but we can’t dwell on what has happened, just be happy for those that are still with us and begin anew. Now this is our plan…”

Norm on Fri, 20th Jun 2014 3:42 pm 



What if all the lemmings are driving escapades off the cliff.

Dave Thompson on Fri, 20th Jun 2014 3:52 pm 



The whole thing will play out as it plays out. Global climate crisis and runaway greenhouse warming has been set in motion,no matter what humans do at this point, it all looks very grim.

Dave Thompson on Fri, 20th Jun 2014 3:55 pm 



http://brooklynculturejammers.com/2014/06/20/tonight-on-wbcr-climate-change-and-extinction-discussion/

Northwest Resident on Fri, 20th Jun 2014 4:19 pm 



Perk Earl — Couldn’t agree more.

J-Gav on Fri, 20th Jun 2014 5:05 pm 



I also agree NW, but the lemming thing has been somewhat overworked for some time now. Especially since lemmings don’t actually do what most people think they do, i.e. jump over cliffs en masse (ALL those film scenes were orchestrated). But I know animal behavior isn’t people’s primary concern so I won’t go into details … It’s a convenient (false) metaphor which might prove to be more true of humans than lemmings …

Makati1 on Fri, 20th Jun 2014 8:50 pm 



I saw the picture and, for a second, I thought the black swans were finally landing …

Northwest Resident on Fri, 20th Jun 2014 9:31 pm 



J-Gav — Dude! You ruined my analogy. But, ok, you forced me to learn the truth of the great lemming myth by doing some searches on Google. In fact, they don’t actually commit mass suicide by stupidly walking off a cliff. Which, by my calculations, makes them quite a bit smarter than humans!

Arthur75 on Sat, 21st Jun 2014 5:13 am 



regarding oil and the petro dollar, if there is a “myth” or false common image that it would be extremely urgent to get out of these days, it is :

“first oil shock (73) = Yom Kippur/Arab embargo= geopolitical story= nothing to do with geologic constraints”

When the real story was :

– end 1970 : US production peak, the energy crisis starts from there, with some heating fuel shortages for instance (some articles can be found on NYT archive on that), or :
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/c/c5/US_Oil_Production_and_Imports_1920_to_2005.png
– Nixon name James Akins to go check what is going on.
– Akins goes around all US producers, saying this won’t be communicated to the media, but needs to be known, national security question
– The results are bad : no additional capacity at all, production will only go down, the results are also presented to the OECD
– The reserves of Alaska, North Sea, Gulf of Mexico, are known at that time, but to be developed the barrel price needs to be higher
– In parallel this is also the period of “rebalance” between oil majors and countries on each barrel revenues (Ghadaffi being the first to push 55/50 for instance), and creation of national oil companies.
– there is also the dropping of B Woods in 71 and associated $ devaluation, also putting a “bullish” pressure on oil price.
– So to be able to start Alaska, GOM, North Sea, and have some “outside OPEC” market share, the barrel price needs to go up (always good for oil majors anyway) and this is also US diplomacy strategy
– For instance Akins, then US ambassador in Saudi Arabia, is the one talking about $4 or $5 a barrel in an OAPEC meeting in Algiers in 1972
– Yom Kippur starts during an OPEC meeting in Vienna, which was about barrel revenus percentages, and barrel price rise.
– The declaration of the embargo pushes the barrel up on the spots markets (that just have been set up)
– But the embargo remains quite limited (not from Iran, not from Iraq, only towards a few countries)
– It remains fictive from Saudi Arabia towards the US : tankers kept on going from KSA, through Bahrain to make it more discrete, towards the US Army in Vietnam in particular.
– Akins is very clear about that in below documentary interviews (which unfortunately only exists in French and German to my knowledge, and interviews are voiced over) :
http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=fQJ-0jAr3LQ
For instance after 24:10, where he says that two senators were starting having rather “strong voices” about “doing something”, he asked the permission to tell them what was going on, got it, told them, they shat up and there was never any leak. The first oil shock “episode” starts at 18:00
The “embargo story” was in fact very “practical”, both for the US to “cover up” US peak towards US public opinion or western one in general, but also for major Arab producers to show “the Arab street” that they were doing something for the Palestinians.

In the end, clearly a wake up call that has been missed.

Note : About Akins, see for instance :
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/07/26/AR2010072605298.html

And his famous foreign affair article :
http://www-personal.umich.edu/~twod/oil-ns/articles/for_aff_aikins_oil_crisis_apr1973.pdf

His report to Nixon in 71 or 72 is still classified to my knowledge though, would be interesting to know if it can be declassified now.

Arthur75 on Sat, 21st Jun 2014 5:18 am 



Even though of course it doesn’t change the current situation …

meld on Sat, 21st Jun 2014 5:25 am 



Even if the elite could be convinced about peak oil, they would never be able to convince the masses. The narrative of growth and progress is so embedded within the current 1st world mind it’s stronger than any region or cult. The elite would just be made out as liers and a great conspiracy would be created organically to explain why the elites were lying to us. Just think of the people who believe water powered cars have bee covered up by the oil companies or those that think Tesla invented free power.

Peak oil is still a fringe subject that only a tiny tiny tiny minority of people know about and an even tinier minority actually understand and accept.

Bandits on Sat, 21st Jun 2014 5:56 am 



We have a world wide “tragedy of the commons” …… It’s as simple as that. Even if that human condition was universally recognised I doubt it could be acted on.

Davy, Hermann, MO on Sat, 21st Jun 2014 7:02 am 



Well, I have mentioned multiple times here about “Top” and “bottom” efforts. This strategy of a two prong action to the coming decent will happen. The question is the time frame, mix, and degree. Time is important and there is a conflict with the timing for the top/bottom efforts. The top will only change with a crisis and that crisis need to be sooner than later. The sooner the crisis occurs for the top the sooner much needed large systematic changes can be made. This was true 20 years ago but large new oil discoveries and other Tech saved the day and allowed the usual dead end BAU practice to continue and intensify. The sooner forced lifestyle and attitude changes will be made on the general public the better. Much is being wasted in an entropic blow off of discretionary energy intensive waste and ecological destructive activities. We are currently better positioned with resources today then we will be tomorrow because of depletion and the daily capacity overshoot increase. So a crisis is a must for the top and sooner the better. At the bottom where transition, mitigation, and adaptation strategies and actions are in progress we need time and the more time the better. These initiatives require investment and effort that requires time. Education takes time. A crisis will disrupt the bottoms access to material, limit funds, and change efforts to crisis management and away from investment. There is of course an optimum intersection point somewhere and of course this is all speculation and theory on my part. The main point is “crisis”. In today’s hyper complex self-organizing system change is not going to happen unless forced by circumstances. This change will have to be destructive but not enough destruction that a reboot at a decent level of stability is not possible. We don’t want to lose vital infrastructure that cannot be replaced. Pain, loss, and “Ugly” are unavoidable but more or less is possible especially by the right top down efforts. We must have destruction and crisis to have a rebirth. This is a law of nature and it is a fundamental part of the cycling of nature and the human social/economic/political fabric. This cannot be avoided. The longer this systematic path is repressed and forced the more disequilibrium builds the worse will be the break to a lower level of complexity and economic activity. Lower level of economic activity today equates to food insecurity, hunger, and regional famine with a population in overshoot and a global food system dependent of energy intensity and other FF inputs. Decent will be random, irrational, and dysfunctional meaning the outcome cannot be predicted but the path is undeniable and predictable. Only the time, location and details are up in the air.

Survival Acres on Sat, 21st Jun 2014 4:54 pm 



Wishful thinking and unrealistic. Nothing will stop the destruction-for-profit paradigm. Only total collapse. But even then, it will still be BAU and for-profit, for as long as possible (which will be too long to prevent any catastrophe, i.e., runaway global warming or embrace the preservation of the Earth can happen).

Even NASA is now warning of total collapse in just a few years. This report changes nothing. No matter what study is published, nothing changes. No matter what evidence or proof is brought forward, nothing changes. Proof positive nothing will change.

It’s pure hopium to suggest otherwise.

Although still in the common vernacular, the so-called “wake up call” is a myth. Individuals wake up, institutions do not. They’re very deeply entrenched in the status-quo.

The growth paradigm, plunder the Earth for profits at any cost has not slowed down at all.

Grassroot organizations are not accomplishing anything of significance. That too should be bloody obvious. Despite millions participating over many decades, nothing changes the dominant paradigm. Adding “more” to the effort won’t change anything.

The suggestions in the article are the same old, tired arguments used repeatedly, demonstrating that no new ideas or approaches are even being considered.

I’ve utterly given up on expecting any so-called “leaders”, even in the alternative movements to have anything helpful to offer. They’re unwilling to abandon their own failures. They’re far too embedded in their own dependency and the very idea of “changing the system from within” – which is what every single one advocates (and fails to do).

They’re not capable of leading anybody anywhere. They don’t recognize how completely powerless we are. They embrace a false assumption that “more of us in the know” will change how things function. That is proven failure.

Every proposal that I’ve seen remains powerless at the very core of the message. We’re all being told to “politely demand” the destroyers of the Earth to “change their ways” before it kills us all. It’s very clear this does not work and never will.

Those that think they can “vote” with their money (or their vote) are seriously deluded. This changes nothing, but makes you feel like you’ve “done something”. More hopium and self-delusion.

Those that think the collapse won’t be “managed” fail to realize that the for-profit paradigm will continue to work (very well) even during the descent. Every possible scenario will be leveraged, ensuring that the major players that exist today – continue to exist at any cost (including the death of millions through war, starvation, genocide and anything else imaginable).

The false assumption is that any of this can be stopped. How?
Through peaceful protests? Letter writing? Boycotts? How has that worked out so far? The global destruction continues to accelerate.

Corporations control the governments (and the world). Neither are concerned about the people or the populations they manage. What you hear is lip-service. It’s all about money, always has been, always will be. The glaring failures of those that oppose what is going on will continue for as long as they embrace their own false paradigms and assumptions.

Every single movement in the country has been infiltrated and co-opted, even the peak oil movement. None are allowed to achieve any success. Organization is a death knell to any effort that expects to change the status-quo from within. This is why none of them succeed and remain forever marginalized.

The “Bottom Up, Top Down” is already a proven failure, tried countless of times in preceding decades (and generations) with zero success to the dominant paradigm of exploiting everything for profit.

This is not how to describe a “future success” – it’s how you describe countless past failures.

Makati1 on Sat, 21st Jun 2014 10:41 pm 



Survival, you said it all. Those hoping for anything else will be sadly disappointed, I think we are watching the last days of humanity.

Davy, Hermann, MO on Sun, 22nd Jun 2014 5:38 am 



The 1st episode will be in Asia, Mak. Grab your popcorn!