I just want to clear up a couple of points of confusion, rather than retread old ground.
handofdave wrote: You sometimes worry me a little bit with the intimations that a solution must be imposed by force... I don't want you to take this the wrong way, 'cause I don't think you're a sociopath, but that sounds too much like Bush's call to attack Iraq. You see a catastrophe coming any day now, and propose drastic emergency action to forestall it. You don't specify what that might be, but one thing I'm sure of, I'm very suspicious of any plan that severely impacts real lives based on the POSSIBILITY of disaster. As we've seen in Iraq, this rush to action created an even BIGGER disaster.
It's very easy to cherry-pick examples to present a specific position. In another post (to illustrate your own ideas) you wrote about how important it was that the west joined the Soviet Union in the war against fascism.
Pretty much everyone now agrees that action should have been taken sooner, and been far more dramatic, back in the 1930s (and yes, there were people calling for it at the time and being condemned for being part of the lunatic fringe... read some of Orwell's mid-30s essays). When Hitler annexed the Rhineland, or the Sudetenland. When he marched into Czechoslavakia and engineered the Austrian anschluss... sensible pragmatic people on all sides demanded caution. We can't just rush headlong into this... it could be a disaster.
And they were right. It could have been. But it was still the right thing to do. So when I call for radical action, even revolution, it's not good enough to say "Iraq".
You say 'tomayto', I say 'tomahto'. You say 'the Iraq war', I say 'the Munich agreement'.
Sometimes radical courses of action are required. We may disagree (and clearly do) about whether this is one of those times; but you can't cite WWII in those cases where you agree with such action (and I think we can all agree that opposing European fascism in the 1930s, even with force, was the right thing to do), and then cite Iraq in those cases where you don't (and again, we both agree in that case, it was not the right course to take).
handofdave wrote: Now, global warming, et al, is real, this is clear. I don't think catastrophic world collapse is imminent, as you suggest, tho.
I don't buy that idea that the shit will hit the fan everywhere at the same time. Yes, the end of the world comes, just for some people here, a few over there, and some more over there... it's a slow-motion end of the world. Religious fanatics have been proclaiming and putting dates on 'the big one' for centuries... the doomsdays come and go, and we're all mostly still here.
Two things here.
Last one first... Religious fanatics have been proclaiming and putting dates on 'the big one' for centuries... the doomsdays come and go, and we're all mostly still here.
Let me point out that argument is like a red-rag to a bull for me. I know you didn't know that, but I'm being honest so you're aware of it. It absolutely infuriates me. Mostly because I've heard it more times than you could believe.
I was writing about 'peak oil' in the late 90s. Almost without exception, I was told that I was an idiot because "people have been predicting this for years and it hasn't happened". Essentially the idea was that because someone said something wrong 15 years ago, anyone who says it now must also be wrong. It's a logical fallacy of the highest order.
The analogy I always used was this... Imagine we both climb into a car and start driving down a highway. I say to you that we're going to run out of fuel in 10 miles. You tell me I'm wrong. I say, "mark my words, handofdave, we'll be out of fuel in 10 miles". And I am wrong. We pass the 10 mile mark and are still going. As we pass the 11 mile mark you look over and triumphantly declare "See, you were wrong. We'll never run out of fuel!"
Now, I was wrong about the timing in that analogy. But you were wrong about something far more fundamental. See, it just makes no sense. The fact is that past predictions (particularly religious ones) have no bearing on current predictions (particularly if they are backed up by a vast wealth of scientific data).
The second issue is the imminence of collapse.
If you're at all interested in understanding where I'm coming from (and I'm not really sure why anyone would be, but let's just suppose...) then this point is probably the most vital to get your head around.
I am not suggesting that all the oil wells will dry up on the same day. Nor am I suggesting that the effects of Climate Change will fuck up the planet in the next two years (or five, or ten). I'm suggesting that in order to deal with problems of such a scale -- problems that involve massive feedback loops -- that radical action needs to be taken long before the worst effects become apparent.
The US Dept. of Energy states clearly and without reservation that if we wish to mitigate the effects of a global peak in oil production then we must implement a crash programme 20 years before it happens. Even 10 years prior to the peak will simply be too late. And waiting for it to occur before addressing it will result in catastrophe.
Regarding Climate Change; I do not think that the globe will suddenly heat by 5degC on January 1st 2011. I'm saying that if we haven't implemented a radical plan before then, that nothing we do will prevent a Climate Change disaster over the next 30 or 40 years.
There is a limited timeframe in which to act.
Another analogy... we're all packed into a bus speeding towards a cliff. There's only a certain timeframe available to start applying the brakes. If we hit the brakes after we've gone over the edge then it's entirely useless, and the fact that it might take a little while before we hit the ground doesn't mean that everything is OK.
I think there's a fair chance that we may already have gone over the edge. But until we know for sure, then the earlier we slam on the brakes the better. It might still be a pointless exercise of course, but we're fools if we don't at least give it a shot.
handofdave wrote: So, changing the way we operate is vital, and we should be (should have been for the last thirty years, really) putting it into practice, but it's got to be done patiently, safely, and we must avoid making things worse in our attempts to make things better.
You hit the nail on the head. We should have been doing this for the past 30 years. And people were calling for it then too. The late-60s / early-70s was when these calls began, and if they'd been heeded at the time then we might not be in this mess now.
But we didn't heed them then. We didn't apply the brakes, we hit the accelerator instead. And now (in my view) there's no longer time for 'patience', and we must take grave risks with our 'safety'. It's not an ideal situation, but it's where we find ourselves.
A revolution is needed. And I'm not talking about grabbing pitchforks, burning down the palaces and shooting the Romanovs (though history suggests it may come to that). I'm talking about a revolution in how we think, in our basic values, in the way we see ourselves, how we see the world and how we understand the links between the two.
It carries with it great risks. But the risks involved in every other course of action are -- I believe -- far far greater.
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