Consider the cave man
Neolithic hunters wiped out many megafauna with spears; but the modern world can spend lots of money on preserving threatened species in breeding programs.
Medieval nations razed half the forests in Europe for grazing space; but the modern world can pour tens of billions into science that might bankrupt livestock grazing.
The 20th century is known as the era of steel and oil; but the 21st century will be the era of steel and silicon – wind and solar.
Generally Doomers think “Industrial technology bad, collapse good”. But stone age hunters caused some profoundly sad extinctions, and the modern world seems on the brink of both cleaning up it’s act and having the excess wealth and time to fund conservation efforts. When people are starving to death the last thing on their minds is conservation. Remember Castor and Pollux. Remember all those threatened species breeding programs that would crash and burn if civilisation died.
George Monbiot – Industrial Collapse is NOT going to save nature
Dear Paul
If I have understood you correctly, you are proposing to do nothing to prevent the likely collapse of industrial civilisation. You believe that instead of trying to replace fossil fuels with other energy sources, we should let the system slide. You go on to say that we should not fear this outcome.
How many people do you believe the world could support without either fossil fuels or an equivalent investment in alternative energy? How many would survive without modern industrial civilisation? Two billion? One billion? Under your vision several billion perish. And you tell me we have nothing to fear.
I find it hard to understand how you could be unaffected by this prospect. I accused you of denial before; this looks more like disavowal. I hear a perverse echo in your writing of the philosophies that most offend you: your macho assertion that we have nothing to fear from collapse mirrors the macho assertion that we have nothing to fear from endless growth. Both positions betray a refusal to engage with physical reality.
Your disavowal is informed by a misunderstanding. You maintain that modern industrial civilisation “is a weapon of planetary mass destruction”. Anyone apprised of the palaeolithic massacre of the African and Eurasian megafauna, or the extermination of the great beasts of the Americas, or the massive carbon pulse produced by deforestation in the Neolithic must be able to see that the weapon of planetary mass destruction is not the current culture, but humankind.
You would purge the planet of industrial civilisation, at the cost of billions of lives, only to discover that you have not invoked “a saner world” but just another phase of destruction.
Strange as it seems, a de-fanged, steady-state version of the current settlement might offer the best prospect humankind has ever had of avoiding collapse. For the first time in our history we are well-informed about the extent and causes of our ecological crises, know what should be done to avert them, and have the global means – if only the political will were present – of preventing them. Faced with your alternative – sit back and watch billions die – Liberal Democracy 2.0 looks like a pretty good option.
The Guardian – 2009
Eclipse Now 