Overshoot

At the Denver ASPO conference, I had the good fortune to meet Dr. Albert Bartlett. Afterward, Dr. Bartlett e-mailed me some material he had written over the years. The "Laws of Sustainability" were included in this material. They are part of Al Bartlett's contribution to the anthology The Future of Sustainability by Marco Keiner, published in 2006.

I start with a basic truth. A persistent pattern of violence against people, community, and nature is inherent in the institutional structure of our existing economy. You don’t treat a cancer with Band-Aids, and we can’t resolve our current economic crisis with marginal regulatory adjustments. It is time to rethink and restructure.

Passing the world oil peak has had, and doubtless will continue to have, relatively little impact on the long-term price of gasoline. The economic implications of getting through the first half of the Oil Age have been much more significant, a trend that seems likely to continue until the collapse is complete.

-The ecocidal moment
-“All will be done again as it was in far-off times”
-(Re)Imperializing Anthropology and Decolonizing Knowledge Production
-Do Increased Energy Costs Offer Opportunities for a New Agriculture?

September 2009 the latest global temperature rise projections released by the Hadley Centre, part of the British Meteorological Office indicated an average rise of 4 degrees Celsius (that’s a balmy 7.2°F) by 2055 given a business as usual scenario. Some places will be a bit more stable, but the places that particularly matter – the ice caps, the methane-rich permafrosts in northern Canada and Siberia, and the Amazon rainforest – will be melting, off-gassing, and burning, respectively.

-Tulare couple grows a garden by the foot
-Rooftop farming
-Richard Wiswall on the business of organic farming
-On World Food Day: Crunching the Numbers
-Aquacalypse Now
-Culinary Ecotourists Turn Wilderness Foraging into Dinner

-A Timely Reminder of the Real Limits to Growth
-Liberal Education, Stewardship, and the Cosmopolitan Temptation
-Decline of a tribe: and then there were five
-Last Call at Descartes’ Bar and Grill
-The Vindication of a Public Scholar

Evolution demands short-term thinking focused on individual survival. Most attempts to overcome our evolutionarily hardwired absorption with self are selected against. The Overman is dead, killed by a high-fat diet and unwillingness to exercise. Reflexively, we follow him into the grave.

It is John McPhee, that fabulous writer about the geology of the United States, who has given me the insight as to what the "true" purpose of humankind is....to alter the landscape and the atmosphere to such a degree that we bring about wholly new conditions on Earth.

How secure is our civilization’s accumulated knowledge? It is a question that, in a fundamental sense, transcends many life-and-death concerns (threats of sickness, natural disaster, or military invasion) that prompt us collectively to spend fortunes on insurance, health care, and weaponry.

-World's river deltas sinking due to human activity, says new study led by CU-Boulder
-Gulf of Mexico 'dead zone' to grow dramatically due to federal biofuel mandate
-Dust Storm Blankets Sydney as Drought Bites
-Water worries threaten U.S. push for natural gas
-Alternative Energy Projects Stumble on a Need for Water
-Obama administration wades deeper into Delta mire

-What Have We Done to Democracy
-Planetary Boundaries and The Failure of Environmentalism
-Will modern-day flaneurs help rebuild fragmented communities?

Many Oil Drum readers imagine what is ahead as a slide down the net energy curve, as the amount of oil and natural gas available gradually decline. Somehow, business as usual will continue, but at a lower level, as resources deplete. But what if a better model for what is ahead is overshoot and collapse?

-Factoring People Into Climate Change
-When It Comes to Pollution, Less (Kids) May Be More
-Copenhagen and population growth: the topic politicians won’t discuss

-Prime Minister, we have a water problem
-Water shortage in Mexico results in fines
-Atlantic rising: Adapting to climate change in Morocco