MONDAY, JAN 31, 2022: NOTE TO FILE

The Real Green New Deal

Acknowledging the problematique is a step in the right direction

Eric Lee, A-SOCIATED PRESS

TOPICS: REAL, FROM THE WIRES, SOLUTIONATIQUE?

Abstract: The activist's position is based on sound systems science. That systemic change via organizing/inspiring a mass movement based on self-recognition of our problematique is possible is a conjecture. It is possible to nail the human predicament while utterly missing the solutionatique (which starts by destroying all belief in political solutions, which the RGND fails to do and so is part of the problematique dynamic).

COOS BAY (A-P) — The Real Green New Deal and [comments in brackets].

STARTING PREMISES AND GOALS

Consistent with the biophysical evidence [and the principles of systems science], REALgnd acknowledges (1):

the fallacy of human exceptionalism. H. sapiens is an evolved biological species that is part of nature and therefore subject to the same natural laws and limitations as other living things, particularly the laws pertaining to energy use and material conservation. [✓]

that, like all other species, H. sapiens has a natural propensity to expand into all accessible habitat and consume all available resources. However, in the case of [modern techno-industrial] humans, "available" is constantly being redefined by technology. [✓, MPP (maximum power principle)(9),]

that, in the absence of rational controls, humans will use any source of abundant cheap energy to (over)exploit ecosystems. [✓, absence of memetic feedbacks that could make (over)complex society an evolvable system rather than the dissipative structure that modern techno-industrial society (global monetary culture), currently is,]

that the human enterprise (people and their economies) is an embedded subsystem of the ecosphere and that decoupling it from Nature is not even theoretically possible. [✓]

that modern techno-industrial society is an unsustainable blip in the history of human civilization, made possible only by a one-off inheritance of fossil fuels (FF), which will either run out soon (i.e., they will become too financially and energetically costly to extract and use) or which we must choose to stop using: 1) in preparation for their eventual depletion, 2) to avoid the continued ecological impacts of their extraction, transportation, and processing, and 3) to avoid the worst consequences of climate change. [✓, and the history of human overcomplex societies (last 10k years) is a blip in the 375k year prehistory of our species. The 'choose to stop' option as imagined requires human culture (as memetic system) to foundationally change such that modern techo-industrial society turns into its opposite—an evolvable system, which may be impossible, e.g. changing a remorselessly humancentric/egocentric memetic system into a naturcentric one.]

Consider that one barrel of oil is the energy equivalent of about 10 years of human labor. To supply the average American with his/her economic goods and services requires 6,806 kg of petroleum (~50 barrels) per year (2). Which means that the average American has about 500 “energy slaves” – mostly fossil fuels – working for him/her around the clock (one energy slave = the energy output of one person). [✓, but adding embodied energy (e.g. the energy of slaves that created infrastructure like hydroelectric dams) adds to the number of energy slaves serving their master. Having no slaves or at most a few (energy, human, animal) will be different, especially for Americans, but without turning fossil fuels into food (et al.) the population supported by sunlight will seem small by today's standards.]

that so-called renewable energy technologies (namely solar, high-tech wind, large-scale hydropower, and nuclear) are not renewable. They rely on 1) techno-industrial processes that are not possible without FFs, 2) a dwindling supply of non-renewable metals and minerals, 3) ecological destruction and pollution, 4) and terrible working conditions in the mining industry, much of which are offshored to the Global South. At the end of their short lives (ranging from 15 to 50 years, depending on the technology), they have to be decommissioned and transported – using FFs – to waste sites, only for the entire process to start all over again. [✓, e.g. average FF built hydroelectric dam may last 400 years, after which it will become a waterfall or fail. In less time, most other structures will become ruins.]

that calls for “net zero” carbon emissions 1) rely on unproven technologies that can only be manufactured through FF-based, techno-industrial processes, 2) entail significant ecological damage (the injection of toxic substances into the ground), and 3) belie the need to abolish FF use for the above reasons. [✓, i.e. belie the need to rapidly degrow the global economy.]

that human society is in overshoot, meaning that humanity has exceeded the regenerative capacity of ecosystems and become parasitic on the ecosphere. Any species that maintains itself through the continual depletion of the biophysical basis of its own existence is inherently unsustainable. [✓, i.e. will climax and unmanaged descent is likely to be rapid and chaotic.]

Consider that there are only about 12 billion hectares of ecologically productive land and water on Earth (3). For 7.9 billion people, this is about 1.5 global average hectares (gha) of biocapacity per capita (4). However, humanity is currently consuming about 2.8 gha per capita – 75% more biocapacity than is available given the size of our current population (5). In other words, humans currently use the equivalent of 1.75 Earth’s worth of resources and assimilative capacity each year. Species can exist in a state of overshoot only temporarily and at a great cost to the ability of ecosystems to provide life support services in perpetuity. [✓, but any species that causes the extinction of other species (certainly one causing a mass extinction event) is in overshoot and the Anthropocene mass extinction event didn't begin in 1970. The spread of agriculture 3k to 4k years ago, converting biomes into agroecosystems caused significant environmental degradation, is the condition that needs to be redressed by rapidly degrowing human population and consuption. Degrowth is the condition that will come anyway.]

The one-Earth lifestyle of 1.5 gha per capita for 7.9 billion people mentioned above equates to the current lifestyle intensity of countries such as Myanmar, Ecuador, Mali, and Nicaragua (6). By contrast, in 2017, it took over 8 gha to support the average North American lifestyle (7) – meaning Americans and Canadians have overshot their equal share of global biocapacity by a factor of 400%. [✓]

that climate change is only one of many symptoms of overshoot. Thus, carbon is only one indicator or metric to consider. [✓]

that a state of ecological overshoot does not resemble, and greatly constrains, what is possible in a steady state at or below the carrying capacity. [✓]

that (un)sustainability is a collective problem requiring collective solutions and unprecedented international cooperation. [✓, if collective action to address the overshoot prolematique were possible.]

that if humanity does not plan a controlled descent from its state of overshoot, then chaotic, painful collapse is unavoidable. [✓, and if a plan for a rapid, controlled descent from 8 billion people to 35 million in 78 years is not agreed to by almost all (who could then defeat those who resist), then assume chaotic collapse.]

that gross income and wealth inequality is a major barrier to sustainability. Socially just, one-Earth living requires mechanisms for fair income redistribution and otherwise sharing the benefits of eco-economic activity. [✓, e.g. inequality in a range of 0.8 to 1.2, with 1.0 being 'enough' and 0.8 being 'just enough' to avoid a significant increase in mortality risk.]

that life after fossil fuels will look very much like life before fossil fuels. [✓, e.g. no electrical services or perhaps up to 50 wH/person/day assuming a sustainable population of perhaps 7 to 35 million.]

Consistent with these biophysical and social realities, our [activist] goal is to assist the global community to [change course 180 degrees]:

accept that short-term, self interested economic behavior at the individual and national levels has become maladaptive at the long-term, global level. [✓, but not possible while living within modern techno-industrial society that selections for short-term self interest in serving the economic system. The mladptive global socio-political economic system that selects for its own continence is not remotely sustainable.]

formally acknowledge the absurdity of perpetual material growth and accumulation (the hallmarks of capitalism) on a finite planet. [✓, then abandon the modern techno-industrial system that remorselessly selects for its continence (and its own failure).]

commit to devising and implementing policies consistent with a one-Earth civilization, characterized first by a controlled contraction of the human enterprise and a re-configuration of its material infrastructure, with the end goal of an ecologically stable, economically secure steady state society whose citizens live more or less equitably within the biophysical means of Nature. [✓, by designing an viable ecolate civilization and inviting all humans to vote with their feet to be part of it, thereby accepting limits, e.g. to reproduce or consume unsustainably, knowing that perhaps less than one percent could/would vote with their feet.]

develop and implement a global fertility strategy to reduce the human population to the billion or so people that a non-fossil energy future can likely support in material comfort on this already much damaged Earth. [✓, to rapidly reduce the human population to 1 billion by natural death via a birth-off policy in 69 years. The final population would depend on the number of annual births, e.g. if 470,000/year (instead of current 140 million), then the population would be in the 30-35 million range assuming no significant change in today's death rate, i.e. no increase in starvation or conflict deaths.]

identify which types of energy are actually renewable, or largely dependent upon, renewable resources, and what this will mean for the re-design of society’s infrastructure. [✓, and attempting to exchange real slaves and animal slaves for energy slaves is an assumed development to consider limiting.]

begin the planning necessary to eliminate fossil energy by 1) rationing and allocating the remaining carbon budget (8) to essential uses, de-commissioning unsustainable fossil-based infrastructure, and re-building critical renewable-based infrastructure and supply chains, and 2) reducing material consumption consistent with Global Footprint Network estimates of ∼75 % overshoot. [✓, i.e. eliminate all fossil fuel use other than as need to produce industrial conversion of fossil fuels into food to avoid Malthuian deaths until the population is low enough in about 70 years to produce food without fossil fuel inputs.]

understand that life after the luxury of fossil fuels holds many gems and should not be feared. [✓, i.e. we could eventually come to live as well as the Kogi when we learn to understand the planet and live with it properly within limits.]

An absence of material luxury need not equate to an absence of a good, comfortable lifestyle. [✓, e.g. having enough food, water, air, shelter, and ability to maintain homeostasis.]

Lacking the energetic slaves of fossil fuels will involve more physically active lives in closer contact with each other and Nature, both of which will improve our overall well-being and restore our shattered sense of connection. [✓, when we again live in band-sized groups of trusted and trusting others.]

Emphasis can shift from material progress to progress of the mind and spirit, which are unlimited. [✓, other than by human mental (cognitive/intuition) limits approached asymptotically, e.g. a dog cannot understand calculus, hence is limited, and human understanding is similarly limited, so we can but endeavor to think well within a self-secreted expance of error, ignorance, and illusion to iterate towards a better view.]

1. Ecological Economics for Humanity's Plague Phase (Rees 2020)

2. The World Bank, Energy Use (kg of oil equivalent per capita) in United States [source cited is broken link]

3. Global Footprint Network, Global Biocapacity

4. Global Footprint Network, Global Biocapacity Per Capita

5. Global Footprint Network, Global Ecological Footprint Per Capita

6. Global Footprint Network, Ecological Footprint by Country

7. Global Footprint Network, Ecological Footprint of North America

8. Mercator Research Institute on Global Commons and Climate Change, Remaining Carbon Budget

9. The Maximum Power Principle

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