BBC: "Humanity is the Greatest Challenge" - a must read article

This is an article by the American ecology/population writer Dr. John Feeney. He runs a blog called "Growth is Madness" and is one of the more coherent and thoughtful writers tackling the multifaceted problems of growth these days.

This piece is one of the very best I've read at describing the box humanity is in, couched in clear, comprehensive, gentle yet uncompromising terms. It's not long (900 words or so), but it packs an enormous punch. It needs to be read by absolutely everyone.


Read the whole thing, including an amazing string of comments that are 99% along the lines of, "Finally someone said it!"

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-tarianism, I am afraid this falls into the customary category with so many other inconvenient truths, such as retractions about Bushie Lies foisted on the toadying MSM on p.72 of the style section while they trumpeted the lie itself 24/7 for three weeks to inncoulate the minds of the 99% who saw the lies but never saw the retraction and the truth...

John Feeney, and all the rest of us shouting in the wind



The Bushie Lie Machine and the Too-Little Too Late MSM that troll in the Bushies' slime trail of lies, misinformation, half-truths and disinformation.

+ + = :nuke: :nuke: :nuke: :nuke: :nuke: :nuke: :nuke: :nuke: :nuke: :nuke: :nuke:

I've come to see this as the greatest framing that the right wing has done. They say that violence, uncontrolled growth, the pursuit of power and money without regard to the consequences, lying, cheating, and so forth are all "natural." Neocon-men see liberals as foolish because they don't see, as the neocons do, that there's nothing you can do about these things because they are a part of "human nature." Similarly, being unable to stop them is also "natural."

The consequence, for me, is that I've personally lost patience with creative, sarcastic, sardonic, ironic statements like you've put up here - not because I think that you (or most on this board putting up such) are intending to confirm the right-wing ideology, but because you and others don't see that by talking this way you are reinforcing their framing. You are actually a causative agent in creating the situation you supposedly deplore, but find inevitable.

It won't be sufficient, in the future, to say that what you did to mitigate or avoid the disaster was to make clever, colorful, snarky comments.

"What did you do to prevent environmental collapse, Daddy?"
"I disapproved, and made sure to make fun of everyone involved."

You may have a stellar activist life, but consider that the way you talk about this stuff when you're in comfortable circumstances may have consequences you can't actually abide. Yes, we have freedom of speech, speech that has consequences - real ones, in this case, that can actually kill and destroy.

I'm sorry if this rains on your parade, but the time for parades may be over.

I very much understand what you are saying about RW memes of inevitability, but it is also too late in the game not just for parades but for rose-colored glasses, too.

As for the consequences, all the pebbles get bounced around during an avalanche.

I respect your view, I just happen to disagree with it. I have had this discussion in many forms at many times at DU, much as when I "Paul Revere" in the real world peopel seem to automatically assume I am sort sort of Far Leftist simply because I oppose Bush so virulently.

"Have I ever spoken about property redistribution?" I ask.

"Have I ever said that the government should own everything and command the economy?" I ask.

"Have I ever said that neurosurgeons should be paid the same as garbage men & women?" I implore.

Of course, it almost always bounces off the armor of ignorance. For most people (this is not to say I am better than anyone else: I have an area of 'expertise and study'. I am a stupid monkey-primate in other areas. All of us humans, are all a mixture of better and worse, smarter and dumber, weakness and strength) the quick-connections we are all imbued with now, lack of historical knowledge makes them easy prey to be implanted with Bushie ideas like corn in a goose's gullet, passes through without being digested. I strongly opposed Bushler, so I must be a Far Leftie.

It has happened to me, literally, more than a hundred times. I have done a LOT of Paul Revere-ing, and no, I never advocated giving up to anyone.

It is suffused in the Bushie Lies and Bushie Framing and Bushie Propaganda that is now Conventional Wisdom because all of us let this thing grow in the 80s and 90s without taking steps to counter it before it became what it is today...Conventional Wisdom, but mainly it is so because it spews from every orifice of our media.

And that has not chnaged substantially in seven, really fifteen years. Again, I apologoze for reality and I apologize for being unable to soldier on unquestioningly in the face of such evidence.

Maybe I am wrong. I hope I am wrong. Yes, words have consequences. Mine is one voice of what is rapidly approaching seven billion.

I am not and never will advocate giving up. Even if the cause is lost, to stand and be true is worth it, if the cause is good and just.

But that is just something else people assume incorrectly, same as those who assume that I am a Communist instead of a Constitutionalist.

But here. carolyn Baker says it better than I ever could.

http://carolynbaker.net/site/content/view/178/

http://carolynbaker.net/site/content/view/178/

You seem thoughtful, yet you pull this old saw of a title for your reply.

<sarcasm>
Your beliefs, of course, are realistic, whereas others just are not. Can't you just hear Cheney's intonation as he says "I apologize for reality's bias?" I knew you could.
</sarcasm>

Perhaps you do indeed see yourself as heroic, unwilling to give up even though the cause is lost. Yet you are resoundingly proclaiming the pointlessness of the fight. The fact that you yourself find meaning in fighting an enemy you persist in deeming unstoppable is clear. Few people share the heroic ideal in this, its classic form.

"I apologize for reality." I think that's a ridiculous thing to say, and that obviously you still don't get it.

Here's the thing - You are advocating giving up, in the way you portray the situation. I wish you could see the self-pity and self-congratulation, and focus on the effect that it has on others when anyone says things like "reality is on the side of the defeatist," or "history proves that there is no hope of success," or "no-one will stand up." If your commitment is as solid as you say it is, that's little enough sacrifice to ask. There are plenty of examples in history of events that are "non-viscous," where there is no change observed for long periods, then things shift.

It is part of the basic nature of human beings as borne out through our history since the Neolithic Revolution, along with the extreme limitations of living within a democratic system.

Pray tell me, what politician in the United States (or any other Western democracy, for that matter) could be elected by proposing the kind of stringent measures that would be necessary to adequately address the numerous crises we face? Jimmy Carter once told us to turn down our heat and put on a sweater -- and in 1980 he got turned out on his ear. I'm not saying that was the whole reason he was defeated, but it certainly played a role.

It's a nice conundrum we're in. The only thing that is big and powerful enough to really address this problem is government. However, that government is paralyzed against meaningful action because or the very shortcomings of the democratic process. People are, by their very nature, loathe to give up things they have come to take as their birthright. Woe to the politician who proposes they have to seriously sacrifice.

It's as if you were saying "My argument is non-political, it's not even an argument, it's the truth." You're making an assertion about human nature, and citing all of human history as your evidence, a sure sign of a flabby argument. Nothing further need be adduced, eh?

This is just blather, and pointedly political in the current circumstances - you might as well be defending slavery as natural because of its long history. As if humans have been exactly the same throughout all of history. You've given up thinking, and are just muttering the same platitudes over and over. Your attitude of "nothing can be done" helps to the right wing immensely, and your story (and that's all it is) about human nature feeds their meme of "we're natural, you liberals are all artifice." Implying that progress is impossible, you think that's a smart move?

To address your point regarding slavery:
Slavery always was, at its heart, about ENERGY. EVERY major civilization in the history of man has made use of it in one form or another. Without forced labor, it was next to impossible to construct the physical structures and projects required for civilization. While this slavery may have existed in widely differing forms -- forced peasant labor in China to build the Grand Canal, "adoptive" slavery in African civilizations, indentured servitude in the early colonies and race-based slavery in the antebellum American South -- the fact is that every major civilization used slavery of one sort or another in order to expand its influence. None of the advanced, western world we take for granted ever would have come into existence without the profits made through the cultivation of sugar in the West Indies -- perhaps the most slave-intensive industry the world has ever seen.

It's no small coincidence that the time that slavery (at least on a widespread, accepted scale) died out was the same time that humans began to harness the power of fossil fuels -- first coal, then petroleum. In fact, if you look at it from a certain perspective -- we replaced the slavery of other human beings with the slavery of millions of years of organic matter. It is upon that slavery that the American Empire has spread its influence across the globe. I cannot help but think that, when easy access to fossil fuels disappears, that humankind will return to some kind of slavery arrangements to fill the void.

It's as if you were saying "My argument is non-political, it's not even an argument, it's the truth."

It's interesting to see words put into my mouth like this, and then be accused of offering a flabby argument. Perhaps my argument was not as well grounded as it might have been, had I taken a significant amount of time to type it instead of trying to fit it in between lesson planning. However, I do not believe what I type is the unadulterated truth -- but I do believe an argument should be presented FORCEFULLY, otherwise it's all just apologia.

Basically, my argument is this: human societies follow a path of a certain inertia, and once the direction of that inertia has been set, it is extremely difficult to push them off that course. Here in the United States, our inertia involves an attitude of entitlement toward a neverending supply of cheap fossil fuels and widespread luxury. Now, if you believe this to be the case (as I certainly do), it becomes incredibly difficult to knock society as a whole in a drastically different position. Society will keep trying to maintain its course, even in spite of all evidence to the contrary.

If that is the case, you need to look for solutions elsewhere. Personally, I believe that such solutions will come from communities and networks formed to deal with the oncoming crisis as it becomes more clear. The challenge to their success, however, will come from the darker side of human reaction -- alternative networks that arise to maintain some sort of privilege, one that is founded upon overpowering and exploiting the other.

Given the general trajectory of human civilization in this regard, let's just say I try to remain optimistic against evidence to the contrary. I do not present this as an unadulterated truth, nor do I force anyone to accept it as such. It's just one person's view of the world based upon studying the past and the present -- take it or leave it.

My basic thought is I think you need to stop giving up, and you don't realize how much your presentation contributes to other people giving up as well.

I'd like to explore, among other things, your position that "you cannot help but believe" that slavery is a natural development from our current situation. Perhaps you feel also that it would be natural for Bush to declare himself emperor, or women to return to chattel status? Perhaps you are currently positioning yourself to have a good position with one of the new slavemasters?

Probably you find that more than a little harsh. Don't you think it's possible that your attitude actually is an instance of the kind of inertia you seem to feel is a dismal discovery you've made, or reasoned, about society in general? All of your obvious education expresses itself in helplessness before the burden of the current conceptions of the past, and cheery defeatism?

I don't believe that you actually, thoroughgoingly believe this stuff. Try taking your human side and using the education to arm it, instead of letting a professional attitude drown your heart. Useful as they are, giving primacy to abstract arguments about the patterns of society are for the Bloody Bill Kristols of the world. Arguing that the regress of human society is natural fosters defeat.

n/t

They're so cute.

They carry the line.. make us feel important
and immortal.

And too many babies mean extinction.

"Fortunately, expert consensus tells us we can address population humanely by solving the social problems that fuel it."

How do you solve the social problems that fuel it?

"Neither justifies hiding the truth because total resource use is the product of population size and per capita consumption."

By increasing per capita consumption, if it is to be done humanely.

I think that's the trap we're in. We can't stop, but we can't keep going. We have 6.5 billion+ people today. We haven't started doing anything yet, so that number will go up before it goes down. Billions of those billions are not connected to the global economic system, and if they are connected at any point, that means an increase in consumption. An increase in consumption will help with the population, but we still have the problem of an aging population that nobody has had to deal with fully yet, in Europe, Japan, and even here in the US. How do you keep paying for the increased living standards? Mass immigration to the developed world? What happens to the countries that you're taking people away from? They need people in order to pump energy into their system and increase their standards of living. How do you keep paying for everything in the developed world if there are more people retired than working?

We can't stop, and we can't keep going.

Downright denial, I am always suprised when I see it. Its just simple math. People keep increasing. Oil consumption keeps increasing. Finite resources. Finite atmosphere to fill with carbon and crap. Trouble ahead.

When the reality of cause and effect and a finite planet, confront the ego of our being.

The social darwinist's wet dream.

of environmental crises that humankind has created . . .

"If we've altered the climate, it should come as no surprise that we have damaged other natural systems. From deforestation to collapsing fisheries, desertification, the global spread of chemical toxins, ocean dead zones, and the death of coral reefs, an array of interrelated declines is evidence of the breadth of our impact."

global warming is but one symptom of human desecration of the planet that is our home . . . our habit of "shitting where we eat" has gotten so bad that we can't even see the table anymore . . .

some say we are killing the planet . . . the planet will survive quite nicely, thank you very much, once it gets rid of the parasitic species that's doing all the damage . . . in the end, what we'll end up killing is not the planet, but ourselves . . .

I still think we are in line for one those big die offs by some weird virus. The odds are stacked in that favor. Considering the pathogens have eons of a head start it also seems inevitable :shrug:

I've been doing a lot of research on this very question. Here's what I expect.

Famines will result from a loss of energy to drive the economies of the poor nations:

First, global energy will decline:



The decline will be led by oil and natural gas:



Due to enormous population growth in poor nations, the number of people subsisting on very small amounts of energy will balloon:



The loss of GDP associated with the loss of energy means that the per capita GDP of the developing world will plunge while its population soars:



The next link in the chain is soaring fertilizer costs. Natural gas prices are responsible for 85% of the cost of fertilizer, and natural gas supplies will decline by perhaps 75% over the next few decades. The impoverished developing world will be faced with a triple threat of declining water supplies, the limit to available arable land (which has already been reached), and the probability that fertilizer costs will go up 10x to 50x by 2050. The price rise will be that severe because natural gas supplies will decline and the rich nations will have the discretionary GDP to buy most of the world's remaining fertilizer production.

Massive famines in the developing world are on the horizon within two to three decades. The coming decline in GDP among the rich nations means that their ability to donate food aid will be sharply curtailed, even below its already pitiful level.

Support for this argument is here: World Energy to 2050 and Energy Decline and the Growth of Destitution.

Paul Chefurka

You're right - its quite good. Doesn't exactly say anything "we" don't already know, but puts it all together VERY succinctly. Ms Bigmack

As the author of the BBC article I'm glad, and not surprised to see, that DU members could appreciate its message.

Conservative columnist, Mark Steyn, on the National Review Online, was critical of it :grr:, focusing solely on the passage, "We must end world population growth, then reduce population size. That means lowering population numbers in industrialised as well as developing nations." Here's his post:

http://corner.nationalreview.com/post/?q=ODg3YWI3MjM3ZWIwMjIzYjdmZGQxYTY4MmQ0N2FhNDU=

Conveniently, he left out the subsequent, "Fortunately, expert consensus tells us we can address population humanely by solving the social problems that fuel it."

Some other conservative bloggers have parroted his deception. Here's a particularly charming (not) example:

http://www.moonbattery.com/archives/2007/11/another_envirow.html

So it seems these folks are willing to be blatantly deceptive.

Fortunately, that tactic is so simple to refute ("Uh, no, I said . . . ") that I or others will be able to do so with ease in subsequent articles.

At any rate, it's good to see some of that nonsense balanced out by the good sense of DU members as well as a few bloggers I've spotted.

NoMoreMyths touches on an important quandry - that part of addressing population effectively involves improving economic conditions. That tends to mean increasing consumption. So if we're not careful we'll simply be damned if we do and damned if we don't. We can't begrudge the developing countries their wish to have our living standards, but we can assist them in the transition to renewable energy, and rethink our own consumption needs along the way. We'll need to do more to enable a slowing and ultimately a shrinking of global population while also paying close attention to how we consume resources. No one said it would be easy. :shrug:

-- John Feeney