That insistent question mark, shown above, is the graphic you'll see if you click this link. Clicking that link will direct you to an article in the January 2025, edition of The Desert Report. The title of the article I am referencing is as follows: "What's The Real Problem?" I consider this article to be an important effort to deal with the economic, social, political, and environmental crises that directly challenge both you and me, and that challenge every other person now living on this planet.
I have extolled The Desert Report before, and here I am, doing that again! Please read the article I have linked above, and consider subscribing to the magazine, which is published by the California/Nevada Desert Committee of the Sierra Club.
"What's The Real Problem?" is not what I would call "cheery." The article was written by William E. Rees, Professor Emeritus at the University of British Columbia and former director of the School of Community and Regional Planning (SCARP) at UBC. Rees was born just eight days before I was, in 1943, and that means that both he and I can legitimately claim to have "been around." We have been many times around the sun! While "older" isn't always "wiser," I think that Rees' analysis is well presented, and his explanation of that "real problem" is easy to understand.
Rees believes that the "real problem" confronting everyone alive today is what he denominates "MTI," or the "Modern Techno-Industrial World Order." Sometimes, he uses the term, "overshoot."
Clearly, Rees says, it is at least theoretically possible to reset our current "world order," and to organize our economy, society, and culture so that we make sure that what human beings do is not going to undermine the Natural World that sustains all life on Planet Earth. Rees doesn't talk, explicitly, in terms of the "Two Worlds" understanding of reality that I always talk about, but he definitely understands things in just the same way I do:
To achieve a just and sustainable material steady-state on Earth we need a personal to civilizational transition away from MTI sensibilities to a wholly new way of thinking and being on Earth (a new set of beliefs, values, assumptions and behavioral norms) in which humans can live spiritually satisfying lives more equitably within the biophysical means of nature.
Having made the statement just quoted, Rees then asks the obvious and most pertinent follow-up question: "HOW to get there?" He suggests, first, that a global calamity may do the job for us, noting that "it may take a dramatic failure - systemic collapse and millions of deaths - to shake a culture from its customary narrative." This is, essentially, what Kim Stanley Robinson has suggested is the most likely scenario, in his book, The Ministry For The Future.
Rees also identifies chronic energy shortages, or global famine, as ways to get people's attention. He obviously wrote his article before the Los Angeles wildfires, because something like that, maybe on an even more massive scale, could do the trick. Mass demonstrations or revolution might also work, says Rees. "If enough people are truly disadvantaged or disenchanted they may revolt, overthrowing corrupt governments."
Rees actually suggests that the United States might be getting close to such citizens’ uprisings, and specifically calls out the December 4, 2024, assassination in New York City of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson.
In the end, Rees doesn't want to let some dramatic "trigger event" compel us into changing what we do. He provides the following "Plan B" as his best "HOW to get there?" scenario:
In the final analysis given the momentum of MTI culture and systemic resistance to change, I'm not sure there is anything truly transformative ordinary people can do on their own to "tackle" overshoot. Ironically, at a time when community cohesion has never been more important, society seems ever more fractured and mutually distrustful. This is not helpful. Overshoot will end, and in present circumstances any "outcome" will probably be tragic at some level for millions. It’s not even certain that major governments and international institutions can positively influence the nature of the outcome. (The 1992 United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change and its 29 international COP conferences to reduce fossil fuel use and emissions have failed repeatedly – both consumption and emissions are at record levels and rising).
Perhaps the wisest strategy for individuals and communities is a combination of self-education, community re-building for mutual understanding/support, and active political engagement. The initial goals should be to raise eco-social-reality to popular consciousness and to organize discussion of key elements of a "Plan B" for orderly degrowth tuned to your community. And remember, focus on the HOW question. Do you have a social-change theory and operational strategy? Develop one – HOW, by what (preferably non-violent) means, do we convince both our local political leaders and ordinary citizens to take the necessary steps to reduce their personal and community eco-footprints?
Looking ahead, and perhaps most importantly, Plan B will invariably involve determined action to relocalize; work with allies on a strategy to bring home crucial economic activities, particularly food production/processing, cloth and clothes-making, and essential small-scale manufacturing. As globalization erodes and related supply chains fray to breaking, it will be necessary to insulate yourselves, loved ones and friends against the worst effects of the transition, whatever final form it takes.
Above all, think of this as opportunity; let the creative juices flow as if your life depended on it – because it does (emphasis added)!
Again, Rees doesn't use the same terminology that I use in these daily blog postings, but his personal prescription, his "Plan B," is what I call "politics," what I call, "self-government."
Can small groups of people change the world? I think that you can either take it from Margaret Mead, who says that this is the only way the world has ever changed. Or, you can "find some friends," and start proving it for yourself.
Thanks for the link to this article and the Desert group. It's heartening to read at least one more person with the same sensibility about the need for drastic cultural change to overcome the destruction of the natural world caused by human overshoot ("Overshoot: The Ecological Basis of Revolutionary Change", William R. Catton, 1982).
ReplyDeleteI'm in contact with Chris Cogan of the local Rights of Nature group. While I think that a Rights of Nature ordinance is a cart before the horse of general public awareness, it's an opportunity to discuss the ideas you point out in Rees's article, in preparation for the ultimate necessary changes in human government and economies. I'm attempting to remind them that government laws in the absence of public cultural understanding and support are generally ineffective (e.g. the City's Heritage Tree ordinance). and such a campaign needs to start with public information and education.
Time for LTEs and Op-Eds!