R335977
8 months ago

great, thanks for this.

R336009
8 months ago

awesome article, sam.

..and not any old decision: stop now, or collapse.

i’d say we need to do more than stop – go in reverse. carbon neutral isn’t going to cut it… we need a carbon negative world… like soon. 383 ppm CO2 back to 320ppm or we’re pretty hosed. probably should do somethin’ bout all that land we turned into concrete and them oceans we polluted i reckon.

R336014
8 months ago

dude, why does everyone always pick on me? i was jus’ tryin to get next to da hot bitch..

fuck

R336022
8 months ago

sweet article, szam

does decentralization of the economic structure (especially agriculture) exist inedependently of or in corollary to the political control necessary to defuse the capitalist mentality?

R336024
8 months ago

extremely well written. concise, informative, understandable, accessible. great review. will look into this, if its written anything like this article.

R336046
8 months ago

Real good review definitely considering picking that up, Im not an environmentalist by any stretch but its starting to get to the point that ecological disaster is looking more and more like its gonna be the case.

R336056
8 months ago

This is basically eco-socialism, and Cox alludes to eco-socialist thinkers like Joel Kovel and, refreshingly, a side of Karl Marx that few will be familiar with (an aficionado of organic manures and localized agriculture).

Kind of like China fifty years ago, an organic agrarian society dependent upon oxen and bicycles.

The bottom line is that almost nobody is interested in life as a peasant or a career of participation in collective farming, not even the rural Chinese that are still living this lifestyle.

Anybody here interested in giving up his computer and comfortable lifestyle “scrounging off the empire” to till the earth behind an oxen or a draft-horse?

Forever?

I come from a family that survived a sustainable, though extremely limited lifestyle off 80 acres of land through the Great Depression.

They later embraced the rebound and growth of industrial society during the economic recovery of WWII and then moved to “town” during the post-war boom of the 1950’s and never looked back or even so much as considered moving back to “the farm” though the property remains in the family.

Fact is even with the purchase of additional adjacent property, the land wouldn’t yield enough to feed, clothe and shelter the family that has sprung from that core group.

This is nearly a universal reality around the globe.

This planet can’t support 7 billion hunter-gatherers any more than it can provide the raw materials and absorb the environmental impact of 7 billion fully vested participants in “developed” economies.

Fact is we like working at Star Bucks as opposed to weeding by hand.

We’ve got a handle on how to control our reproductive capacity without depriving ourselves of sexuality.

The only realistic way out of this mess is to limit and/or drastically downsize our numbers to meet the carrying capacity of the planet voluntarily, or prepare for the next great war, the likes of which the world has never seen. (which is being done)

The Chinese and the Indians are industrializing their societies with leaps and bounds and they aren’t voluntarily going to turn back.

The rest of the “developed” world is going to have to deal with accepting the constraints this growth will place upon their societies in terms of higher prices for energy and raw materials by downsizing their own economies or limit the growth of the developing world by force.

The reality is that both these strategies are in place and being pursued with increasing intensity.

The industrial development genie is out of the bottle.

Sometimes no Peace

R336058
8 months ago

Fact is even with the purchase of additional adjacent property, the land wouldn’t yield enough to feed, clothe and shelter the family that has sprung from that core group.

Depends on the soil, the skill of the farmers, what they are willing to eat and the strength of local markets to supplement their diets with what they cannot grow themselves. Small scale agriculture is more productive per acre than industrial agriculture, but more labour intensive. To achieve that productivity you have to cultivate a high diversity of crops/husband animals, so it isn’t suited to growing cash crops for marketing by big box supermarkets.

Something huge would have to change to make such farming worthwhile, although farmers markets are a growing means of making the labour pay.

I don’t agree that no-one wants to head back to the land at all. Many people would leap at the chance (look at all of the farmers who were kicked off their land by rock bottom prices, predatory supermarkets etc…) and there are plenty of young people around who would take the chance of gaining the skills needed to make small farms work.

In places like India small farmers aren’t leaving for the bright lights of Mumbai, they are leaving to escape grinding rural poverty brought on by the global market. Many have been choosing suicide over urban exile. Given a choice I would wager that a large proportion of barrio dwellers would try a rural life if they had secure tenure, training and marketing assistance.

R336064
8 months ago

I don’t disagree with anything you’ve said in the previous post.

You could certainly grow enough potatoes, fruits and vegetables to provide a small group with sufficient calories to survive on the property I’ve described and probably support a cow or two as well. Like I said, a family of 5 didn’t have any problem.

Providing for 50 (there’s more) would require major changes, but might be theoretically feasible.

The problem would be the amount of labor required and the return on that labor as well as the energy required for space heating to survive the winters and providing basic sanitation. They burned wood from the property in the 30’s.

The greatest hurdle would be getting those tied to this land to willingly accept this subsistence lifestyle over the ones they currently enjoy.

The majority of them would rather play a few rounds of Survivor and shed some “unnecessary family” than try to live like the Waltons in relative rural poverty.

Therein lies the universal rub. We had an agrarian society with sustainable living at one time and abandoned it for the material benefits of industrial development and have become accustomed to the lifestyles we live today.

Few will voluntarily give that up to live communally off the land, even with their own relatives, let alone their neighbors.

This is, by design, where the development of the circa 1980’s concept of “social darwinism” has taken us.

The wealthy certainly aren’t going to voluntarily abandon industrialized society to till the earth and would fight the nationalization of “their” assets tooth and nail. (OK, they’d pay somebody else to fight for “their” assets tooth and nail.}

The middle class would rather turn a blind eye to the murder of the citizens of developing nations to obtain needed resources, as they watch their own neighbors being squeezed from the middle class into poverty, than band together to legislate just political and economic solutions.

Democracy is a great form of government in a growing economic environment, but is fundamentally worthless in dealing with the realities of limited growth, recession and depression, when the world view of the majority very quickly becomes “it’s every man for himself.”

Sometimes no Piece

R336065
8 months ago

“using efficiency to make growth less destructive is sort of like playing “whack-a-mole” at the county fair. Knock capital out of circulation here, and it will pop up over there.”
~ Stan Cox

As a realist, I’ve little choice but to disagree entirely.

Using efficiency to make economic growth less destructive is the only peaceful way off this path towards further environmental degradation and should be embraced, not rejected out of hand.

The alternative is more “social darwinism” the survival of the wealthiest.

Peace,

R336068
8 months ago

“You could certainly grow enough potatoes, fruits and vegetables to provide a small group with sufficient calories to survive on the property I’ve described and probably support a cow or two as well. Like I said, a family of 5 didn’t have any problem. “

Prior to the 1840ies in Ireland a family this size would have been surviving on 1/2 an acre

R336088
8 months ago

Using efficiency to make economic growth less destructive is the only peaceful way off this path towards further environmental degradation…

Well, it isn’t the ONLY peaceful way. We could voluntarily have less children. If every woman only has two kids over the next 45 years, the world population will drop – no war, famine or plague required. My wife’s mom had six kids – she was performing her Irish Catholic duty. Would she have acted differently if she was informed that for every kid beyond two, she was increasing the odds of a future hell for all of them?

I read of an old Chinese man who mocked the “kids” of the new generation that are criticizing the one-child policy. “In the old days, you would have 5 kids and 4 of them would die. Now, you have one child and it lives.”

That comment speaks volumes. Our mammalian instincts were developed in harsher times. We are programmed for producing batches of kids, because in the old days there were two likely possibilities – either the extra kids would die, or they would migrate to nearby vacant lands.

What a difference in lifespan a moderate increase in technology makes. And the nearest vacant land hasn’t been terraformed yet.

My wife and I have vowed to do our part and not have kids. Easy for me – my body is programmed for “sex”, not “birth”. But for my wife… the mid-thirties hormones are playing her. I’ve watched her go from a confident, empowered “modern woman” to someone who has all the aplomb of a 13 year old boy trying to hide his erection while standing at the front of the class. And I can’t but help to notice the fairly clear links between less children and increased risk of breast cancer – it’s as if the tissue itself goes apeshit when it isn’t allowed to carry out its program.

R336137
8 months ago

Prior to the 1840ies in Ireland a family this size would have been surviving on 1/2 an acre

You might grow enough potatoes for sufficient food calories on half an acre for a family of five, but it certainly wouldn’t provide the pasture necessary for a cow or two or support any other livestock.

Never mind having enough land for a woodlot to provide the energy for cooking, hot water and space heating.

aganunitsi,

Though I advocate a no child decade, with which humanity drastically cuts back its ecological footprint and totally reforms its attitudes towards reproduction and childrearing, being a husband and father to three sons, it is hard to imagine a women remaining childless throughout her lifespan, though some obviously manage to do it and thrive.

Being a parent is a huge responsibility and burden regarding a situation over which you have very limited control.

It takes a village to raise a child, or selfishly throw them to the wolves.

Sometimes no Peace

R336138
8 months ago

Great job, Sam.

R336139
8 months ago

“You might grow enough potatoes for sufficient food calories on half an acre for a family of five, but it certainly wouldn’t provide the pasture necessary for a cow or two or support any other livestock.” -True, but fuel was usually provided by turf from the local bog, and they usually kept a pig to pay the rent with as well.

R336662
8 months ago

The planet isn’t anywhere near as sick as our global society, which is suffering from a distinct lack of understanding of the priorities of the actual common threats we face.

Peace,

R336878
8 months ago

I live in a Michoacan in Northern Cal. The babies are having babies here and they do not get charged for the medical bills. Increase population, increase the consumption of resources. Increase the consumption, increase the pollution, crime, war, etc,.. To the pendejo’s who want to cry racism: There is only one Race! The Human Race and we are all sinking in this boat together.