MONDAY, OCT 8, 2018
Deglow NOW!
For a prosperous descent
Eric Lee, A-SOCIATED PRESS
TOPICS: ABANDONING INDUSTRIAL SOCIETY, FROM THE WIRES, SYSTEMS SCIENCE, ECOLATES
Abstract: "In order to change an existing paradigm you do not struggle to try and change the problematic model. You create a new model and make the old one obsolete. That, in essence, is the higher service to which we are all being called." —R. Buckminster Fuller
TUCSON (A-P) —Do you live in the glow?
Then you also live in the flicker.
A planet was taken to create the flicker. The sooner lights go out the better for all life on the planet, including those humans, the Leavers, who are not part of the taking. Consider the possibility of moving, of voting with your feet as an intentional eMigrant. Initially those in North America should consider south coastal Oregon. Australia may be the first continent to deglow. Move out of the flicker and help to degrow the local economy, embrace low-power, and transition to the future without the kicking and screaming. Transition intentionally, with enthusiasm, to live the ecolate life-driven purpose of enough—of enough consumption, enough low-power technology (50Wh electric per person per day), enough population of humans, their pets and livestock, but no more than your watershed can support comfortably as the centuries pass. There are no limits to learning or doubt-inquiry that we need to fear or restrain, nor are there like limits to loving this Earth and the things of it, including humans who can live the non-cancerous life, who can be not a cancer on Earth. All humans have the potential to live properly with the planet, to understand it, for the price of an ecolate education, and to love it. Leave room (to be numerate: 80%) for Nature. To be literate, listen to the most likely stories as told by those who listen to Nature: listen to Nature who "has all the answers."
So, do you live in the glow?
If you live in the current USA and are still not sure if you live in the glow:
| AL | AK | AZ | AR | CA | CO | CT | DE | FL | GA |
| HI | ID | IL | IN | IA | KS | KY | LA | ME | MD |
| MA | MI | MN | MS | MO | MT | NE | NV | NH | NJ |
| NM | NY | NC | ND | OH | OK | OR | PA | PR | SC |
| SD | TN | TX | UT | VT | VA | WA | WV | WI | WY |
A hundred years ago there was no noticeable glow. No biophysical law of the universe will be broken if in another hundred years there is again no glow. If none, will it be because the teaming billions decide to turn off the lights (energy) that powers techno-industrial society? No, because that would violate the forth law of energetics, Lotka's MPP (Maximum Power Principle), which, like the second law of thermodynamics, doesn't go away because humans agree to not believe in it.
Does that mean the lights will just keep getting brighter as humans become more and more prosperous as the centuries pass? When the earth's oceans are covered by floating cities, it will be brighter unless humans agree to dome all cities, towns, and homes so no light gets out to be viewed from space. When Earth becomes like Trantor, the outer shell of domes need not be illuminated since all the many levels underneath will be illuminated at all times. The surface will be covered in manufactured soil and landscaped in 'natural' vegetation and animals (those that amuse and don't annoy) will flourish.
And then what? Well, by then the Dyson Sphere will be being built faster than humans can reproduce to fill it. Well, not faster than they can, just faster than on average those living in techno-industrial society want to reproduce. Rewards will help and soon women who like to breed or feel compelled to (it often takes religion) will predominate and the population growth rate will increase to match the rate of building the Dyson Sphere. And then what? Well, by then.... you don't want to know.
Anthropocene enthusiasts, the over 99 percent, know that things will just keep getting better and better because progress is what matters, growth is good, and humans are exceptional. Mere limits don't apply as we, or at least some of us, are clever beyond belief. It will be just like in the movie 'Idiocracy'. There will be problems, crops may stop growing, but some smart guy will come along and figure out we just need to irrigate with plain old water. The Brawndo Corporation may suffer (their shareholders anyway), but the economy will keep growing for some reason, I don't know why, but it will because it gotta grow. Degrowth is just a crazy idea, but deglowing the world is a great idea. You can live in all the light you want, inside your dome, or go outside and wander across the top of one dome to another, that are all covered in soil, under a gloriously dark sky at night with all them star things shining up there.
If your belief in growth ever falters, you might as well kill yourself and get out of the way of those who do have faith. Or consider moving to south coast Oregon or maybe Australia to live the Simpler Way, voluntarily of course, 'cause there's some sort of law of the universe that says we should get what we want.
If there were just enough of us and we just wanted what we needed, then everyone would have enough. And enough would be enough. Don't agree? Well, you're free to believe anything you want.... but then what?
Source: Charles A. S. Hall, State University of New York http://www.esf.edu/efb/hall/
After M. King Hubbert, 1969. The questions: how high the glow and how fast the descent?
The above guess has peak everything occurring in about a hundred years, an optimistic projection.
So why wait? Deglow NOW! in the next decade or so while the moving is easy.
If the distribution of potential deglowers, currently <0.01%, is random, then what?
If we are using 170 TWh/y now and there are 7,600,000,000 of us, then per capita consumption is about 22,368,400 Wh/y/person primary energy (about 61,283 Wh/day/person), not including agriculture, perhaps 150 times more than is sustainable.
Americans (United Statesans) consumed 3.82 trillion kilowatt hours of electricity in 2017 and there are about 325,700,000 of them consuming 11,730,000 Wh/y/person (or 32,130 Wh/day/person compared to 7,534 Wh/day/person global average). If 50 Wh/day/person electricity is sustainable (1/150th current or 640 times less than average Americans have gotten used to consuming), then expect to deglow—voluntarily or not, sooner or later.
Expect the teeming billions to opt for 'not' and 'later'. If so, what might make a few opt to deglow? Think: ecolate [systems science] education. "To understand something is to be delivered from it." This is because 'to understand' references a model that, for those who would rather know than believe, comes to control how they live on the planet.
Believing in the model [science] is maladaptive. If the model determines the 'rules of the game' that selects for human behaviors that maintain "a viable equilibrium between Man’s demands and Nature’s resources" and if the model actually reflects Nature, the nature of things, then we will live per Nature's laws in a naturocracy and evolve as the eons pass post-Anthropocene. Those who continue to live the cancerous life will be selected against. Those who don't like being selected against, who firmly believe that human extinction, or even devolution, is impossible, who cannot question received mythology, should note that "Nature is unkind" and no one gets a vote.
