30June2009
Posted by Carleton Schade under: Uncategorized.
Excerpt from chpt. 1: Dieback: The Science and Soul of the Coming Collapse, pp. 16-18.
John Godfrey Saxe wrote in poem57 his version of an old Indian tale whereby six blind men describe an elephant:
It was six men of Indostan,
To learning much inclined,
Who went to see the Elephant
(Though all of them were blind),
That each by observation
Might satisfy his mind.
The First approach’d the Elephant,
And happening to fall
Against his broad and sturdy side,
At once began to bawl:
“God bless me! but the Elephant
Is very like a wall!”
The Second, feeling of the tusk,
Cried, -”Ho! what have we here
So very round and smooth and sharp?
To me ’tis mighty clear,
This wonder of an Elephant
Is very like a spear!”
The Third approach’d the animal,
And happening to take
The squirming trunk within his hands,
Thus boldly up and spake:
“I see,” -quoth he- “the Elephant
Is very like a snake!”
The Fourth reached out an eager hand,
And felt about the knee:?”
What most this wondrous beast is like
Is mighty plain,” -quoth he,-
“‘Tis clear enough the Elephant
Is very like a tree!”
The Fifth, who chanced to touch the ear,
Said- “E’en the blindest man
Can tell what this resembles most;
Deny the fact who can,
This marvel of an Elephant
Is very like a fan!”
The Sixth no sooner had begun
About the beast to grope,
Then, seizing on the swinging tail
That fell within his scope,
“I see,” -quoth he,- “the Elephant
Is very like a rope!”
And so these men of Indostan
Disputed loud and long,
Each in his own opinion
Exceeding stiff and strong,
Though each was partly in the right,
And all were in the wrong!
Unlike them, we have come to realize that we are metaphorically blind to much of reality, or that our vision is hazy at best. We want to see better. We want to wake up, to become more fully conscious. Given our individual limitations, we grasp the need to borrow from many perspectives, so that we may synthesize a creature in the aggregate that no one perspective could alone give us. In the world of business management and policy making this has been referred to as multiframing. Proven to be a powerful tool, it liberates us from the influences of any one ideology59.
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Given the complexity of reality and persuasive power of clever ideologues, our need to synthesize the seemingly disparate gigabits of information into a meaningful and coherent picture will, with each step, require great integrity. For, this book and its subject speaks of too much pain and suffering to be used as a mere intellectual play thing, or one more book to read like so much commodity. Another book, another movie, one more diversion in our busy lives. No, this is a serious venture we undertake. For should we be convinced that the evidence points to a world seriously out of balance, we must necessarily ask ourselves about a potentially drastic new course for individual action.
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So, with each interpretation presented, here and elsewhere, the reader must pause—if for just the slightest moment—to make sure the statement rings true. The reader need not believe; the reader needs merely to accept it as reasonable given the known information. Remember we have agreed to suspend belief and disbelief in our exploration of this most important matter regarding the health of our planet and the viability of our civilization. As we go through the chapters we will be participating in the grand human dialogue, a discussion that has been given hard copy (through writing and iconography) in the past forty-thousand years or so. The grand human dialogue revolves around the imperfect but continued inquiry into our connection to each other, to other life, to the earth and to the universe as a whole.
23June2009
Posted by Carleton Schade under: Epistemology.
Excerpt from Chapter 1: Dieback: the Science and Soul of the Coming Collapse, pp. 14-16.
Interpretation
So, at some point, we must resort to the world of interpretation. That is, to make sense of the external, objective information requires an internal, subjective process of analysis. We may agree that humans have greatly increased carbon dioxide emissions into the atmosphere and that the earth is warming and that frogs are becoming extinct the world over. However, it takes interpretation to link these together. We (individually or humanity as a group) cannot directly watch carbon dioxide molecules trapping the infrared radiation, nor can we observe the chytrid fungus suffocating the individual frogs nor can we be certain that global warming is responsible for the fungus expanding the range of its habitat. These are inferences and interpretations made from more primary information. And since interpretation is inherently more fraught with honest error, unconscious bias, and outright fraud than mere observation and measurement, we come back to face the bogeyman of uncertainty.
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Fortunately, for this, too, a solution awaits. We can adopt the method of the scientists and the sages. Simple and elegant, it goes something like this49: Firstly, one follows an injunction (also referred to as a discipline, method or yoga) that has been practiced by those who preceded us. It may be something like, add several small chunks of dry ice to a solution of distilled water, one Molar ammonia and a few drops of the indicator phenolphthalein; or sit comfortably in a quiet place and count your breaths thusly… Secondly, one experiences the results. I saw the liquid turn pink, or I felt a sense of peace, calm and alertness. Whatever. Thirdly, one discusses with others who have done the same and similar things to verify, reject or modify the results and sometimes the method, itself.
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We don’t have time to follow the injunctions of every discipline—chemistry, physics, linguistics, history, philosophy, psychology, economics, agriculture, nutrition, archeology, geology, meditation, music, and so on. However, for each one of these disciplines, there are plenty of people who have already devoted much effort. And they disagree about any number of matters, refining the interpretations and the method as they learn more. About these things, I will form no opinion. However, about those things of which they are in agreement, I can accept as likely true50.
We can accept the consensus findings of the experts in each field as a starting place51. Accept them with reservation, not unquestionably believe them. Belief will just create the next box that one has to think outside of. Better to create no new boxes. So, let’s not believe anyone, and, at the same time, let’s be open to all consensus information and interpretation being made by those who have spent their lives following in a disciplined way the injunctions of their predecessors.
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If we are still in agreement, then the injunction that we have agreed to follow requires an attitude of: (1) not believing anything that we have not validated through personal experience, (2) keeping in mind that since we actually experience very little of the world we therefore can believe very little, (3) accepting with reservation as likely true the objective, outward, exterior data that people report through consensus, and (4) being reservedly open to the interior, subjective interpretation of that data which the experts of the various disciplines have developed.
Here are some interpretations of the world that this book will accept as true (and will later show evidence for):
(1) However common life may be in the universe, it’s scant within our known neighborhood…
(2) and however likely space travel and colonization of other worlds may seem to some, our home planet is still a garden of eden and presently the only place we can live.
(3) Since agriculture’s birth some 10,000 years ago, numerous societies and civilizations have come and gone.
(4) Of the numerous reasons for their demise, degradation of the soil and climate change rank as leading causes for most of them.
(5) However aware we—individually and collectively—may be about our relationship with the planet, our civilization is now global in extent, our numbers are still rising and every indicator regarding planetary health is degrading at an ever increasing pace.
(6) Despite a rapacious conversion of material to human use, over 850 million people go to bed hungry every night, and half our human family are considered malnourished.
31October2008
Posted by Carleton Schade under: Epistemology; Future; Uncategorized.
Excerpt from Chapter 1, Dieback: The Science and Soul of the Coming Collapse, p. 13-14
Common Ground
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We find ourselves in an unprecedented quandary. As members of a wealthy country in a global economy, our impact upon the earth is likely to be considerable, yet as individuals we are significantly limited in knowing with any certainty what exactly that impact is. Conflicting opinions and a relative dearth of information on the subject (relative, that is, to the gravity of our situation and relative to the information on myriad other, less important topics) have left most of our fellow citizens in an inert state of ignorance. And so we proceed with our lives and participate in our consumer society much like sleep walkers, unaware of the precipice we are fast approaching. We live in a dream state, in a fairy tale land. As Americans, most of us live well enough to leave well enough alone. And on some level this might be a defensible attitude, if it weren’t predicated on such a distortion of the facts. Our dream could soon turn into the nightmare that much of the world is already living. As we shall see in the following chapters, the data suggest that we are facing a bleak future and that the world for which we are educating and otherwise preparing our children is unlikely to exist for them.
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So, how do we wake up? How do we find the pertinent facts and how can we make sense of them? The answer is actually quite simple. We must rely on the reports of those who have observed and experienced what we have not. Without giving it much thought, we do this as a matter of course. I have never been to Greenland, yet I accept its existence. It is logically placed on the maps and globes of the earth; I have seen photographs of it and have read accounts of it; I have met people who report having been there. Similarly, I have come to accept many things into my worldview that I have never personally observed, including nuclear weapons, asteroids and viruses.
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We place ourselves in a situation similar to the common sense point of view described by the philosopher Bertrand Russell. He found that there was little in the world that was truly provable . However, there is a consensus of common sense opinion agreeing to the existence of most things that we take for granted—such as that you exist, as do the people around you, the trees, buildings, etc, and that these things don’t disappear when you are not there. So, if you are not in the forest, the tree does fall, sending out compression waves through the air. Any sentient being in the area with the proper mechanical and neural equipment will interpret those waves as sound. If the squirrel could talk, it could tell you about the falling tree. We therefore agree, implicitly at least, that to know much of anything about the world outside of our immediate experience we must turn to outside sources (squirrels included). The most informed sources will be those whom we call the authorities in their field—those who actually did the observing, measuring contemplating, and calculating.
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Because of lack of time and expertise, we can’t double-check the data gathered by the various authorities. However, we can assemble the facts upon which most all experts studying the various related topics agree. It’s a variant of Bertrand Russell’s common sense hypothesis. All the various systems of belief—the environmentalists, economists, Marxists, Christians, Moslems, etc.—make use of much of the same data. The world population, the gross domestic product of nations, the number of starving people, the number of obese people, the amount of land farmed, all these and more are items that by consensus we can agree as fact . What often differs is what they do with the data—the statistics they employ and the interpretations they make.
18October2008
Posted by Carleton Schade under: Epistemology; Future.
Excerpt from Chapter 1, Dieback: The Science and Soul of the Coming Collapse, p.11-12
And then there’s the problem of complexity. The earth’s interior, atmosphere, oceans and life interact with one another and with the sun’s energy and with a host of cosmic influences in a probabilistic stew that is far beyond our mathematical reckonings. So complex is the world we inhabit that we cannot predict with certainty even the behavior of one single human being; or the exact movements of one single electron in orbit about its atom. Never mind trying to predict matters comprising as many variables as global warming, Middle East relations or the fate of food resources. Science has quantitatively confirmed the adage that the whole is combinatorially greater than the sum of its parts.
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Cause and effect, we find, is rarely related in a simple, linear way. A little more input doesn’t always translate into a little more output. The laws of the universe are not simple linear equations written by some simplistic God. They are complex formulas with innumerable variables working in many dimensions, simultaneously influencing and influenced by innumerable other variables, and continually feeding back upon each other. Properties emerge from these interactions that are far beyond our predictive powers. Nothing that we know about the explosive properties of hydrogen or the flammable characteristics of oxygen would allow us to predict that, when put together, these two elements produce the miracle molecule called water. How less percipient are we about the ways in which the earth’s geochemical processes interact with the millions of living species and the other emergent property we call consciousness. What a mix that is.
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To make matters more difficult for us, these nonlinear laws of nature have what are referred to as tipping points or thresholds. Reach these points in the calculus of our behavior and suddenly the universe seems to run by a whole new set of equations. Natural gas may leak from a kitchen stove and nothing happens when you light a match. Strike it again thirty minutes later and the whole house explodes. A threshold was reached with the variables of methane, oxygen, a flame, space and time. Or take the much-maligned postal worker who for years tolerates the injustices, stresses and humility of his job until one day he can’t bear them any longer and, with seemingly little provocation, he shoots several coworkers. Or, similarly but at another level, population pressures, drought, economic crisis and a hundred years of colonial history between Tutsis, Hutus, Germans and Belgians in Rwanda suddenly exploded in 1994 into a mass homicide where eight hundred-thousand people were slaughtered within the space of a few months . Or tensions fester between Iraq and Kuwait over oil fields along their common border until a threshold is reached in 1990 and Iraq invades Kuwait, which then releases an invasion from other interested players. Or the Soviet Union endures the contradictions of its system and the adversities of the 20th century for seventy plus years, and then, in relatively easy times, suddenly implodes. Or stars like our sun enjoy long lives of relative stability until the moment that the hydrogen fusion process drops below some threshold value and the star collapses, marking the start of its death cycle and the likely end of any remaining life on earth.
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Today, the most consistent scientific warnings about a threshold concerns global warming. Three hypothetical tipping points related to earth’s continued warming this century include the sudden collapse of the Gulf Stream, a runaway collapse of the Amazon rain forest, and a mega-release of methane from the sea floor . Involving the whole planet, living and nonliving, the incremental increases of trapped solar energy in our atmosphere and oceans includes so many variables feeding back upon each other that it makes Poincare’s insolvable three body problem look like simple algebra . Simply put, it is too complex. However, we have witnessed the tipping point effects of our behavior on a smaller scale: (1) The re-emergence of diseases such as cholera and the expansion of malaria due to weather and climate changes, (2) Cultural eutrophication of fresh water lakes and the rising frequency, number and size of dead zones in coastal ecosystems, (3) Sudden fishery collapses due to over-fishing, (4) Loss of local species due to the introduction of alien species, and (5) Localized climate changes caught in a positive feedback cycle, where decreasing rainfall reduces forest plant mass, which decreases the evapotranspiration into the atmosphere, which decreases the water available for clouds and rain, leading to further deforestation .
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Could it be that the many breakdowns of local ecosystems is a symptom of a larger-scale unraveling of earth’s biospheric ecosystem? Is humanity nearing some planetary tipping point? Or, is the earth actually far more resilient and our species far less potent than we imagine?
30September2008
Posted by Carleton Schade under: Dieback; Epistemology; Future.
Excerpt from Chapter 1, Dieback: The Science and Soul of the Coming Collapse, p.10
The Obstacles to Knowing
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And yet we live in an age of uncertainty, for certainty of this kind is exactly what both our contemporary world and twentieth century philosophy have so brilliantly and utterly destroyed. Starting with Nietzsche prior to that century’s beginning and hammered home by the particle physicists and by the Modernist and Postmodernist philosophers, the intellectual and artistic leaders of humanity have determined that the objective truth about anything is elusive, at best . How, for example, do we get beyond our own prejudices to be open to information that may counter our most cherished beliefs? A Christian’s values regarding abortion and a Marxist’s feelings about the relationship of rich and poor will often color their perceptions of such issues as human overpopulation so that both will, for different reasons, dismiss the problem, itself, without due consideration. They may see the problem as suffering due to insufficient charity or to an unequal distribution of resources, but not because there are too many people . Similarly, an American who drives a gasoline hungry SUV is less likely to be open to—much less concerned about—the abstract links between oil, global warming, the spate of wars in the Middle East, terrorism and the health of our planet.
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Numerous veils cloud our view of reality. The thickest and yet least noticeable veil is our culture, for it creates the ground of our daily reality. It informs us about how to interpret our experiences. Two young men holding hands as they walk down the street of an American neighborhood risk ridicule or worse. In India the same behavior would not be even noticed, for that is an accepted way for two friends to show their affection. Furthermore, those people in our culture who serve as our sources of information are often clouded themselves and either knowingly lie and manipulate our information or zealously believe the fallacy themselves. The American people, for example, are still grappling in their hearts and minds with how much the debacle in Iraq was premeditated by powerful interests and abetted by the media and how much was simply a result of well-intentioned ignorance. For even when everyone is being his and her honest best, Truth, or the underlying nature of reality, is often clouded by our own biological limits. Most of existence transpires at sizes, distances and speeds far beyond our awareness. Some phenomena such as global warming are so subtle that we are personally oblivious to them. The temperature changes of a century are more gradual and far smaller than even the fluctuations in a day. And yet it is at the limits of these ranges where the environment to which we must adapt comes into being and transpires—at the level of genes and of atoms, as well as the level of melting glaciers and the time scale of centuries. It is at these invisible velocities and sizes that reality truly functions.
28September2008
Posted by Carleton Schade under: Dieback; Epistemology; Future.
Excerpt from Chapter 1, Dieback: The Science and Soul of the Coming Collapse, p. 8-9
The catastrophe these scientists and many others presage include famine, grim water shortages, plagues and the end of cheap, easy energy . Our plight is compared to that of the passengers on the great Titanic who unwittingly placed all their trust in the hands of the engineers, the owners and the captain, who assured them that the craft was “unsinkable.” However, the economists assure us that the way to the future is to stay the course. We should commit ourselves to the integration of all the world’s local markets into one super global economy. Switching metaphors—for they do not see themselves on that doomed ship—the business community and the nations’ policy-makers welcome all to follow the well-trodden and brightly lit path of prosperity. Only through the global free market will the world’s poor have a chance of joining those of us already enjoying the big party . Back on the party boat, we’ll throw life savers to the drowning poor. But they’ll have to pull themselves aboard, damn it. Meanwhile, waiter, pour me another Manhattan, would you?
.And so, the cornucopian perspective tends to be painted by the economists and business people and the gloom and doom comes from the scientific community. Indeed, the argument is often posed in terms of employment versus the environment, jobs versus the Spotted owl . Given the vehemence of the disagreement between experts, how does one get a real sense of the state of the world? For we are savvy enough to suppose that the optimists and pessimists represent but the poles along a continuum of beliefs. The real state of affairs—we intuit—is unlikely to be as dark as the environmentalists would have us believe or as rosy as the economists portray. Where then is the truth? And how are we, the general laypeople of the earth, supposed to get a bead on it?
.For once we know the truth, once we have a clear idea of how our behaviors affect other people, other living creatures, and, of course, most importantly, our immediate kin—our children and our children’s children—then we will likely direct our behavior to what is best for these. Even if it means some sacrifice on our parts. We are not completely altruistic creatures, but neither are we totally selfish ones. If given the chance, most of us will behave in ways that are honest, compassionate and reasonable.
.So, do we continue merrily, merrily on our current path, or do we change our ways? Given our desire to survive and more—to thrive—and given the possible consequences of our collective behaviors, we must have clarity on this issue.
8September2008
Posted by Carleton Schade under: Dieback; Epistemology.
Excerpt from Chapter 1, Dieback: The Science and Soul of the Coming Collapse, p. 6-7
And, furthermore, should civilization begin to decline, wouldn’t the signs be obvious? Especially given the power of our science and the extent of our news media. Wouldn’t our television screens be projecting a steady stream of ghastly images—of famines, pestilence, pandemics and vicious wars over scarce resources? Haven’t scientists for quite some time been predicting the breakdown of the global ecosystem and “the end of civilization as we know it”? And hasn’t the predicted day passed with the earth as resilient as ever ? No, just as the economists and policy makers assure us, the calls of doom have surely been exaggerated. For example, the famous cornucopian economist Julian Simon in 1995 argued:
Our species is better off in just about every measurable material way… Just about every important long-run measure of human material welfare shows improvement over the decades and centuries, in the United States and the rest of the world. Raw materials – all of them – have become less scarce rather than more. The air in the US and in other rich countries is irrefutably safer to breathe. Water cleanliness has improved. The environment is increasingly healthy, with every prospect that this trend will continue .
.And Bjorn Lomborg, a statistician from the Netherlands who refers to himself as the skeptical environmentalist, says:
The main reason why the infamous “Limits to Growth” reports got their dire predictions of an imminent world collapse so wrong was because they overlooked the fundamental dynamics of technological progress. Modern societies create a great deal of value without much environmental degradation, as economic welfare has come to rely more on how a material is processed and utilized than on the material itself .
.And yet like a pesky pit bull, the scientists and environmentalists refuse to let up. They’re dogged, and their warnings are turning ever more strident. For example, the writers of the Limits to Growth (disparaged above) returned in 2004 with Limits to Growth: the 30-Year Update, and their predictions, using computer-driven scenarios, were indeed more dire:
Consequently, we are more pessimistic about the global future than we were in 1972. It is a sad fact that humanity has largely squandered the past 30 years in futile debates and well-intentioned, but half-hearted, responses to the global ecological challenge. We do not have another 30 years to dither. Much will have to change if the ongoing overshoot is not to be followed by a collapse during the twenty-first century ..
The 1993 “World Scientists’ Warning to Humanity” by the Union of Concerned Scientists –signed by 1,680 world scientists including 104 Nobel prize laureates—reads in part:
Human beings and the natural world are on a collision course. Human activities inflict harsh and often irreversible damage to the environment and on critical resources. If not checked, many of our current practices put at risk the future that we wish for human society and the plant and animal kingdoms, and may so alter the living world that it will be unable to sustain life in the manner that we know. Fundamental changes are urgent if we are to avoid the collision our present course will bring about .
And then there is the Millennium Assessment, prepared in 2005 by 1360 scientists from 95 countries and reviewed by 850 experts and government officials in what has become the largest study on the state of the world’s ecosystems. Excerpted pieces include:
Over the past fifty years, humans have changed ecosystems more rapidly and extensively than in any comparable period of time in human history, largely to meet rapidly growing demands for food, fresh water, timber, fiber and fuel. This has resulted in a substantial and largely irreversible loss in the diversity of life on Earth… Over the past few hundred years, humans have increased the species extinction rate by as much as 1,000 times the background rates typical over the planet’s history… The degradation of ecosystem services is harming many of the world’s poorest people and is sometimes the principal factor causing poverty .
22August2008
Posted by Carleton Schade under: Dieback.
Excerpt from Chapter 1, Dieback: The Science and Soul of the Coming Collapse, p. 5
.Yes, this may all be true, the skeptics say. Societies have come and gone, populations in specific places have boomed and busted. But, curiously, despite this, the number of people who call this planet home has actually increased. Steadily, inexorably. And Civilization (which excludes only those few people living as foragers at the margins of the earth) is arguably now global in extent, encompassing six-and-a-half billion people, and includes a complexity of niches and specializations second only to mother nature, herself. So, even if one were to accept as reality that all that lives must one day die and that even the United States and the European Union cannot escape that logic of mortality, aren’t we now so robust, so powerful, complex and successful, that we will surely be around for many centuries to come? After all, by the standards of civilizations, our modern society has been around only a very short time and has been the most successful society by near every measurement imaginable. Carroll Quigley, a big-picture historian, suggested that, like all our predecessors, our civilization too will “surely pass out of existence” by 2500, but that’s not for another four hundred years yet.
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We’re growing more food than ever before; wars and genocides are generally smaller in scale than in the previous century; there are no barbarians at the gates because there are no gates—we’re global now . Worldwide, people are living longer, making more money, consuming more products . Poverty rates are going down; the very rate of population growth is decreasing for the first time in millennia . There’s more education, less slavery, more democracy . Even the warnings of global warming predict a rise of only a few degrees Fahrenheit by this century’s end . Hardly the stuff of collapses.
7August2008
Posted by Carleton Schade under: Dieback.
Excerpt from Chapter 1, Dieback: The Science and Soul of the Coming Collapse, p. 4
First, let us be clear about the two principal theses of this book: (1) Within the lifetimes of most of us alive today, there will likely be a drastic dieback of the human population. Hundreds of millions, perhaps billions, of people will die through starvation, lack of water and related diseases. (2) Much of the world’s civilization will collapse.
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Although the scope of the collapse and the numbers of people affected will be unprecedented, collapse, itself, is not new to the human experience. History is littered with the collapses of societies, simple and complex . From a cosmic perspective, history can be read as the book of stories chronicling the birth, life and death of humanity’s many societies, states and civilizations. One account after the next in which a group of people became more populous, more diverse and more prosperous. Initially, greater complexity tended to be adaptive, and the societies became stronger. They grew more food, bred effective leaders, built powerful armies. And then eventually, whether it took decades or millennia, the society disintegrated. The people became too many or the soil too exhausted. The neighbors grew too powerful or suffered their own calamities which ended the trade of crucial goods. Or the climate changed. Or the society became too complicated and inflexible to negotiate a world that is always changing .
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The list of those now in the dustbin of history reads like a who’s who of the great civilizations, empires, dynasties and of the small societies, as well: the Mesopotamian, Egyptian, Mayan, Hindu, Chou, Han, Minoan, Greek, Roman, Assyrian, Hittite, Harrapan, Khmer, Anasazi, Honakum, Easter Island . These are but some of the most well-known civilizations and societies that have emerged from the background of humanity, flourished and then faded away. Once filled with the lives of people who felt the same mix of emotions, expectations and hopes as you and I do today, they are now but the eroded remains of stone and rubble, inscribed with epic tales in languages long forgotten. They are food for vine and tree or tiny rubble islands drowning in seas of desert sands. And surely the peoples of these now extinct societies expected their lives to continue on much as it had before and for their cities and cultures to live beyond them.
31July2008
Posted by Carleton Schade under: Dieback.
Excerpt from Chapter 1, Dieback: The Science and Soul of the Coming Collapse, p. 3-4.
And on and on we could describe the suffering of our kith and kin and the destruction of our lovely, nurturing, and simultaneously hostile planetary home. Later in this book I will draw a picture of an ideal that we now have the resources, technology, and know-how to create, but probably neither the will nor the wisdom to realize. Instead, the likely outcome of humanity’s experiment with civilization will be some approximation of the above. It may not happen in 2030—that date was picked was for dramatic effect, of course—or by 2050 or 2075, even. However, the younger your age, the more assured you are of witnessing these horrors. I have a daughter, and the long-term prospects of the world our generation will bequeath to her bring me great sorrow. The dieback of human population and the collapse of societies may well be precipitated by a decade of unusually severe weather, or, perhaps less likely, it may involve a global crop failure following the super explosion of a massive volcano that kills a billion people and darkens our summer skies . And, yet, as much as there is evidence in the geological and archeological record for these sorts of devastating phenomena, they will not be required for our demise. We have assured it ourselves. Like a pestilence, we have multiplied and fed upon all the earth until it can no longer sustain us, and ironically, we have done so in a time when it has been most hospitable to our kind.
If this comes off full of “sound and fury” and reminiscent of the dark minds of science fiction and horror writers or of the biblical doomsday prophets, not the stuff of reasonable and modern minds, then you are likely a reasonable, modern person. You are not easily swayed by provocative, stirring prognostications. You are circumspect. You want to see the evidence, and even when presented with persuasive data you’re skeptical, because you know numbers and logical argument can be twisted for one’s ends and, indeed, you know this is done daily.
This introduction was written for you. It describes the methodology of our undertaking and it acknowledges the problems of epistemology (which just means how we come to know what we know) and it suggests how—in the maze of competing ideas and information—we can yet come to an agreement about many of the issues most important to us. You will find criticism of the dominant ideologies of our times—free market economics, Marxism, environmentalism, Christianity, science, materialism, “Spiritualism,” and the New Age. No ideology comes out unscathed, and, at the same time, in the way of our Postmodern times, we will borrow from them all.