So what is in the book? They discuss the importance of environmental and geographic factors in history, the need for anticapitalist perspectives and for social justice. Then the overall problems of “size, scale, scope, and speed.” One useful concept was the “Overton window,” which postulates that political leaders only consider policies which already have wide public support — which explains much of the environmental crisis. The nature of all living organisms, so this book argues, is to go after 'dense energy,' resulting eventually in crisis. If that is so, then the human organism is facing a tough question: Can we overcome our own nature? Courageous and humble, bold and provocative, the authors of An Inconvenient Apocalypse do not settle for superficial answers." —Donald Worster, author of Shrinking the Earth Although there can be many routes to reaching this social and community stability, “No matter how difficult the transition may be, in the not-too-distant future we will have to live in far smaller and more flexible social organization than today’s nation states and cities.”

An Inconvenient Apocalypse: Environmental Collapse, Climate An Inconvenient Apocalypse: Environmental Collapse, Climate

c. A set of migration pathways to gradually, inexorably move each household away from products produced by Economy 1.0 (degrade the planet as we make our living) to Economy 2.0 (fix the planet as we make our living). Size: What is the size of the human economy relative to the magnitude of the ecosphere? Too large by any reasonable measure. But the general view of our reigning political culture is that carrying capacity applies only to non-human animals in their various ecosystems. No. Although it is passing strange, the PMC (and here I am speaking of the PMC of the Classical Liberal Uniparty that comprises American politics) largely agrees with Julian Simon, who wrote The Ultimate Resource (1981, 1996). In both editions he conflates the fact that any given resource is infinitely divisible with the notion that resources are therefore infinite, practically speaking. Plus, Simon completely fails to recognize that the concept of carrying capacity applies to humans just as it does to any other animal in the ecosphere (5). He is not alone. b. the ability, or not, to return materials to the place they originated. Does nature do “transport”? Geology does transport, the water cycle and rivers do transport, and that’s about it. Everything else is returned to almost the same place it was sourced. Nature recycles, re-uses, wrings every last bit of energy and nutrition from what it sources, and all of the materials are replenished via energy harvested from the sun, via plants, to feed the cycle anew. Local can recycle, but once and done linear global/national supply chains cannot do this.

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The problem of inequities in the world. “But Phillips’s quip is a reminder of the point we will continue to emphasize: wealth and power, along with the responsibility for ecosystem degradation, are not distributed uniformly in the world. Some people take more and therefore should be more accountable for the effects of their taking.” Nuclear fusion is one example of this: Even though the technology remains decades away (if it is, indeed, feasible – there have been many false alarms), the prospect that we could master fusion and release essentially unlimited sources of energy with little ecological cost offers a powerful, addictive toke of “hopium.” This kind of news has the same numbing effect of watching a series of flashy, over-rehearsed TED talks: One gets the sense that the most intractable problems are being dealt with, and therefore one can get on with binge-watching Netflix or mining Bitcoin, or whatever distraction one finds most seductive. This is true of us individually and collectively. The conditions under which a culture emerged may have led to ecologically sustainable living arrangements, but those living arrangements would have been different if initial conditions had been different. If Culture A created an ecologically sustainable way to live and Culture B created an unsustainable system, it is important to highlight the differences, endorse Culture A, and try to change Culture B. But if the geography, climate, and environmental conditions out of which the two cultures emerged had been different, then what would A and B look like? Describes what it means to be apocalyptic now. “First, while the end of the world is likely not at hand (at least not until the sun burns out in several billion years), some things will end, such as the unsustainable and unjust economic, political, and cultural systems that currently dominate human societies.” The potential impact of climate change. “Climate change poses a major risk to the stability of the U.S. financial system and to its ability to sustain the American economy. Climate change is already impacting or is anticipated to impact nearly every facet of the economy, including infrastructure, agriculture, residential and commercial property, as well as human health and labor productivity.”

An Inconvenient Apocalypse by Wes Jackson, Robert Jensen An Inconvenient Apocalypse by Wes Jackson, Robert Jensen

The nature of all living organisms, so this book argues, is to go after 'dense energy', resulting eventually in crisis. If that is so, then the human organism is facing a tough question: Can we overcome our own nature? Courageous and humble, bold and provocative, the authors of An Inconvenient Apocalypse do not settle for superficial answers." In that it is an ideal human community, one that has become increasingly rare if not impossible in our modern neoliberal world. An Inconvenient Apocalypse excels at making difficult concepts easily understandable through skillful use of thought experiments. In one, we're asked to imagine how history might have unfolded differently had the contiguous United States, rather than western Europe, been blessed with the conditions that first paved the way for the industrial revolution. In another, we're given a scenario in which socialism, instead of capitalism, established itself as the dominant economic system of the industrial world. Both of these thought experiments make crucial points about the reality of geographic determinism in history and humanity's susceptibility to "the temptations of dense energy," and they do so in a simple, accessible manner. Scale, scope and speed refer, respectively, to the natural size limit of human social groups, the maximum technological level of a sustainable industrial infrastructure and the speed with which humanity must undergo its transition toward a sustainable society. The authors cite 150 people as the natural size limit of a human community, a figure rooted in human cognitive capacity and known as “Dunbar’s number.” They argue compellingly for an industrial infrastructure that is technologically simpler and far less energy-intensive than today’s. As for the speed with which we must shift our society onto a sustainable path, they say we need to do so “faster than we have been and faster than it appears we are capable of.” The current problem is seen as global warming or climate change. It saddens me deeply to see many people just ignoring this as a problem or taking the views of a minority of science literature that the problem does not exist against the vast majority of climate science experts that we are approaching a pivot point where problems will escalate.

Wes Jackson and Robert Jensen's

Here’s suggesting that “royal” psychology is just a fancy way of saying power corrupts. And that by saying “corrupt” we mean that the rational, practical basis of behavior has been replaced by one that is irrational and instinctive–i.e.the competitive drive for dominance. Surely the above is correct in saying that we need to face reality but by putting that facing up into moral terms it is itself not facing the reality that humans, like all our ecosystem companions, commit behaviors that are only “sins” when they violate the prime directive of social and therefore species survival. The point is that the carrying capacity of planet earth has been way overshot by us humans. Many deaths are coming. Above all, the prophets remind us of the moral state of a people: Few are guilty, but all are responsible. If we admit that the individual is in some measure conditioned or affected by the spirit of society, and individual’s crime discloses society’s corruption. Scope: Our magical thinking about the relationship of the growth economy and the ecosphere in a finite world allows us to believe that an economics of endless growth will not end badly. This bleak future is “not pleasant…to ponder and prepare for, so it’s not surprising that many people, especially those in societies where affluence is based on dense energy and advanced technology, clamor for solutions to be able to keep the energy flowing and the technology advancing.” Thus, our civil religion tainted by technological fundamentalism becomes necessary [(5); the term is originally from David W. Orr]. Regarding fundamentalism of any kind – scientistic instead of scientific, religious, political, economic – I follow Janisse Ray who wrote that “ fundamentalism thrives only where imagination has died” (paraphrase from Wild Card Quilt: Taking a Chance on Home, 2004). Along with fundamentalism comes the naked hubris leading us to believe that humans understand complex questions definitively. No, we never do.

An Inconvenient Apocalypse” by Wes Jackson An Excerpt from “An Inconvenient Apocalypse” by Wes Jackson

Many (most?) indigenous nations operated under an entirely different concept: land cannot be ‘owned.’ It may be territory lived on, hunted on, cultivated, by a group of people, but the concept of ‘owning’ land, with inherent rights of complete domination, destruction, extraction and sale to someone else, (similar to the rights exerted by the slave owner over the bodies of his slaves) is beyond understanding. A chapter of conclusions. “We recognize that we will all face a belt-tightening future whether we like it or not, but that is not an endorsement of the cruel austerity policies in contemporary policy making.” There are no known biologically based differences in intellectual, psychological, or moral attributes between human populations from different regions of the world. There is individual variation within any human population in a particular place (obviously, individuals in any society differ in a variety of traits). But there are no meaningful biologically base differences between populations in the way people are capable of thinking, feeling, or making decisions. We are one species. We are all basically the same animal. a. An architecture, or “design”. What are the sources, flows, transformations, and relationships between sub-systems (ag, energy, transport, mfg’g, use, mat’l reclamation, and re-use). Those source and flow characteristics should look a lot like how the natural world behaves Provides a list of the main societal threats. “The decline of key natural resources and an emerging global resource crisis, especially in water.”First, it should be uncontroversial to assert the antiracist principle, anchored in basic biology, that we are one species. There are observable differences in such things as skin color and hair texture, as well as some patterns in predisposition to disease based on ancestors’ geographic origins, but the idea of separate races was created by humans and is not found in nature. The book reads well. It’s infused with provocative questions and existential philosophy. The authors are reasonable and highly sensitive to social justice.

An Inconvenient Apocalypse – ROBERT JENSEN

b. A set of products, used by the household, that are supplied by the processes developed in step A above. Nothing we have argued relieves individuals or societies of moral accountability for unjust and unsustainable actions. We cannot know precisely what level of determinism is at play in our lives, but we can continue to assess our choices and act according to moral principles of dignity, solidarity, and equality. But as we judge human failures—our own and of others—and take corrective action, we should remember to be humble. Confronting harsh ecological realities and the multiple cascading crises facing our world today, An Inconvenient Apocalypse argues that humanity's future will be defined not by expansion but by contraction.The authors have coined the term “ecospheric grace” to describe their vision of an ideal orientation toward the natural world. To show ecospheric grace is to humble ourselves before the rest of nature. It is to accept that we humans aren’t at the center of everything, that we’ll never completely understand the natural world of which we’re a part and that nature doesn’t favor us over any other species. It is thus also to reject the ideal of Earth stewardship, since stewardship implies authority and control. Our goal should instead be to return the biosphere’s favor of “the gift of life with no strings attached” by treating it well. So, there’s not a lot of specifics here, though it is a useful starting point for discussion. It would be interesting to have people read the book and talk about it, to see where people are on the subject. It discusses contemporary crises. “First, within the human family, we face a struggle for social justice in societies that currently do not operate in a manner consistent with widely held values concerning dignity, solidarity, and equality.” “Second, we face a struggle for an ecologically sustainable relationship between humans and the larger living world, the ecosphere.” This cautious approach is a way of extending the adage “There but for the grace of God go I” beyond individuals to cultures. That phrase emerged from a Christian assertion of humility in the face of God’s mercy, but we use it here in a secular fashion. If one has lived an exemplary life, that’s great, but be aware that life might have been very different if some of the material conditions in which one lived were different. Those who believe they have accomplished something and made a positive contribution to the world should remember that a change in any one of the conditions in our lives, especially in our formative years, may have meant failing instead of succeeding. We are not suggesting that we have no control over our lives but simply that we likely don’t have as much control as many people would like to believe. Harrowing and accessible, this is just the thing for readers interested in a sociological or philosophical examination of the climate crisis." — Publishers Weekly