I admit it: in my last book, The Five Stages of Collapse, I viewed collapse through rose-colored glasses. But I feel that I should be forgiven for this; it is human nature to try to be optimistic no matter what. Also, as an engineer, I am always looking for solutions to problems. And so I almost subconsciously crafted a scenario where industrial civilization fades away quickly enough to save what’s left of the natural realm, allowing some remnant of humanity to make a fresh start.
Ideally, it would start of with a global financial collapse triggered by a catastrophic loss of confidence in the tools of globalized finance. That would swiftly morph into commercial collapse, caused by global supply chain disruption and cross-contagion. As business activity grinds to a halt and tax revenues dwindle to zero, political collapse wipes most large-scale political entities off the map, allowing small groups of people to revert to various forms of anarchic, autonomous self-governance. Those groups that have sufficient social cohesion, direct access to natural resources, and enough cultural wealth (in the form of face-to-face relationships and oral traditions) would survive while the rest swiftly perish.

Of course, there are problems even with this scenario. Take, for instance, the problem of Global Dimming. The phenomenon is well understood: the atmospheric aerosols and particulates generated by burning fossil fuels is reducing the average global temperature by well over a degree Celsius. (The cessation of all air traffic over the continental US in the wake of the terrorist attacks of 9/11 has allowed climate scientists to measure this effect.) If industrial activity were to suddenly cease, average global temperatures would be jolted upward toward the two degree Celsius mark which is widely considered to be very, very bad indeed. Secondly, even if all industrial activity were to cease tomorrow, global warming, 95% of which is attributed to human activity in the latest (rather conservative and cautious) IPCC report, would continue apace for the better part of the next millennium, eventually putting the Earth’s climate in a mode unprecedented during all of human existence as a species.

On such a planet, where the equatorial ocean is hotter than a hot tub and alligators thrive in the high Arctic, our survival as a species is far from assured. Still, let’s look at things optimistically. We are an adaptable lot. Yes, the seas will rise and inundate the coastal areas which over half of us currently inhabit. Yes, farmland further inland will become parched and blow away, or be washed away by the periodic torrential rains. Yes, the tropics, followed by the temperate latitudes, become so hot that everyone living there will succumb of heat stroke. But if this process takes a few centuries, then some of the surviving bands and tribes might find a way to migrate further north and learn to survive there by eking out some sort of existence in balance with what remains of the ecosystem.

We can catch glimpses of what such survival might look like by reading history. When Captain James Cook landed on the shore of Western Australia, he was the first white man to encounter aboriginal Australians, who had up to that point persisted in perfect isolation for something like 40.000 years. (They arrived in Australia at about the same time as the Cromagnons displaced the Neanderthals in Europe.) They spoke a myriad different languages and dialects, having no opportunity and no use for any sort of unity. They wore no clothes and used tiny makeshift huts for shelter. They had few tools beyond a digging stick for finding edible roots and a gig for catching fish. They had no hoards or stockpiles, and did not keep even the most basic supplies from one day to the next. They had little regard for material objects of any sort, were not interested in trade, and while they accepted clothes and other items they were given as presents, they threw them away as soon as Cook and his crew were out of sight.

They were, Cook noted in his journal, entirely inoffensive. But a few actions of Cook’s men did enrage them. They were scandalized by the sight of birds being caught and placed in cages, and demanded their immediate release. Imprisoning anyone, animal or person, was to them taboo. They were even more incensed when they saw Cook’s men catch not just one, but several turtles. Turtles are slow-breeding, and it is easy to wipe out their local population by indiscriminate poaching, which is why they only allowed the turtles to be taken one at a time, and only by a specially designated person who bore responsibility for the turtles’ welfare.

Cook thought them primitive, but he was ignorant of their situation. Knowing what we know, they seem quite advanced. Living on a huge but arid and mostly barren island with few native agriculturally useful plants and no domesticable animals, they understood that their survival was strictly by the grace of the surrounding natural realm. To them, the birds and the turtles were more important than they were, because these animals could survive without them, but they could not survive without these animals.

Speaking of being primitive, here is an example of cultural primitivism writ large. At the Age of Limits conference earlier this year, at one point the discussion turned to the question of why the natural realm is worth preserving even at the cost of human life. (For instance, is it OK to go around shooting poachers in national parks even if it means that their families starve to death?) One fellow, who rather self-importantly reclined in a chaise lounge directly in front of the podium, stated his opinion roughly as follows: “It is worth sacrificing every single animal out there in order to save even a single human life!” It took my breath away. This thought is so primitive that my brain spontaneously shut down every time I tried to formulate a response to it. After struggling with it for a bit, here is what I came up with.

Is it worth destroying the whole car for the sake of saving the steering wheel? What use is a steering wheel without a car? Well, I suppose, if you are particularly daft or juvenile, you can use it to pretend that you still have a car, running around with it and making “vroom-vroom!” noises… Let’s look at this question from an economic perspective, which is skewed by the fact that economists tend view the natural realm in terms of its economic value. This is similar to you looking at your own body in terms of its nutritional content, and whether it would make good eating. Even when viewed from this rather bizarre perspective that treats our one and only living planet as a storehouse of commodities to be plundered, it turns out that most of our economic “wealth” is made possible by “ecosystem services” which are provided free of charge.

These include water clean enough to drink, air clean enough to breathe, a temperature-controlled environment that is neither too cold nor too hot for human survival across much of the planet, forests that purify and humidify the air and moderate surface temperatures, ocean currents that moderate climate extremes making it possible to practice agriculture, oceans (formerly) full of fish, predators that keep pest populations from exploding and so on. If we were forced to provide these same services on a commercial basis, we’d be instantly bankrupt, and then, in short order, extinct. The big problem with us living on other planets is not that it’s physically impossible—though it may be—it’s that there is no way we could afford it. If we take natural wealth into account when looking at economic activity, it turns out that we consistently destroy much more wealth than we create: the economy is mostly a negative-sum game. Next, it turns out that we don’t really understand how these “ecosystem services” are maintained, beyond realizing that it’s all very complicated and highly interconnected in surprising and unexpected ways. Thus, the good fellow at the conference who was willing to sacrifice all other species for the sake of his own could never be quite sure that the species he is willing to sacrifice doesn’t include his own.

In addition, it bears remembering that we are, in fact, sacrificing our species, and have been for centuries, for the sake of something we call “progress.” Aforementioned Captain Cook sailed around the Pacific “discovering” islands that the Polynesians had discovered many centuries earlier, his randy, drunken, greedy sailors spreading venereal disease, alcoholism and corruption, and leaving ruin in their wake wherever they went. After the plague of sailors came the plague of missionaries, who made topless Tahitian women wear “Mother Hubbards” and tried to outlaw fornication. The Tahitians, being a sexually advanced culture, had a few dozen different terms for fornication, relating to a variety of sex acts. Thus the missionaries had a problem: banning any one sex act wouldn’t have made much of a dent, while a ban that enumerated them all would read like the Kama Sutra. Instead the missionaries chose to promote their own brand of sex: the “missionary position,” which is best analyzed as two positions—top and bottom. The bottom position can enhance the experience by taking a cold shower, applying blue lipstick and not breathing. I doubt that it caught on much on Tahiti.

The Tahitians seem to have persevered, but many other tribes and cultures simply perished, or continue to exist in greatly diminished numbers, so depressed by their circumstances that they are not interested in doing much beyond drinking beer, smoking cigarettes and watching television. And which group is doing the best? That’s the one that’s been causing the most damage. Thus, the rhetoric about “saving our species from extinction” seems rather misplaced: we have been doing everything we can to drive it to extinction as efficiently as possible for a few centuries now, and we aren’t about to stop because that would be uncivilized.

Because, you see, that’s who we are: we are educated, literate, civilized persons. The readers of this blog especially are economically and environmentally enlightened types, their progressivism resting on the three pillars of pointing out financial Ponzi schemes, averting environmental devastation and eating delicious, organic, locally grown food. We do wish to survive collapse, provided the survival strategy includes such items as gender equality, multiculturalism, LGBT-friendiness and nonviolence. We do not wish to take off all of our clothes and wander the outback with a digging stick looking for edible tubers. We’d rather sit around discussing green technology over a glass of craft-brewed beer (local, of course) perhaps digressing once in a while to consider the obscure yet erudite opinions of one Pederasmus of Ülm on the endless, glorious ebb and flow of human history.

We don’t want to change who we are in order to live in harmony with nature; we want nature to live in harmony with us while we remain who we are. In the meantime, we are continuing to wage war on the sorry remnants of the tribes that had once lived in balance with nature, offering them “education,” “economic development” and a chance to play a minor role in our ruinous, negative-sum economic games. Given such options, their oft-observed propensity to do nothing and stay drunk seems like a perfectly rational choice. It minimizes the damage. But the damage may already have been done. I will present just two examples of it, but if you don’t like them, there are plenty of others.

For the first, you can do your own research. Buy yourself an airline ticket to a tropical paradise of your choice and check into an oceanside resort. Wake up early in the morning and go look at the beach. You will see lots of dark-skinned people with wheelbarrows, buckets, shovels and rakes scraping up the debris that the surf deposited during the night, to make the beach look clean, safe and presentable for the tourists. Now walk along the beach and beyond the cluster of resorts and hotels, where it isn’t being continuously raked clean. You will find that it is so smothered with debris as to make it nearly impassable. There will be some material of natural origin—driftwood and seaweed—but the majority of the debris will be composed of plastic. If you try to sort through it, you will find that a lot of it is composed of polypropylene and nylon mesh and rope and styrofoam floats from the fishing industry. Another large category will consist of single-use containers: suntan lotion and shampoo bottles, detergent bottles, water bottles, fast food containers and so on. Typhoons and hurricanes have an interesting organizing effect on plastic debris, and you will find piles of motor oil jugs next to piles of plastic utensils next to piles of water bottles, as if someone actually bothered to sort them. On a beach near Tulum in México I once found an entire collection of plastic baby sandals, all of different colors, styles and vintages.

Left on the beach, the plastic trash photo-degrades over time, becoming discolored and brittle, and breaking down into smaller and smaller pieces. The final result of this process is a microscopic plastic scum, which can persist in the environment for centuries. It plays havoc with the ecosystem, because a wide variety of animals mistake the plastic particles for food and swallow them. They then clog their digestive tracts, causing them to starve. This devastation will persist for many centuries, but it has started already: the ocean is dying. Over large areas of it, plastic particles outnumber plankton, which forms the basis of the oceanic food chain.

The ravages of the plastics plague also affect land. Scraped together by sanitation crews, plastic debris is usually burned, because recycling it would be far too expensive. Plastic can be incinerated relatively safely and cleanly, but this requires extremely high temperatures, and can only be done at specialized facilities. Power plants can burn plastic as fuel, but plastic trash is a diffuse energy source, takes up a lot of space and the energy and labor costs of transporting it to power plants may render it energy-negative. And so a lot of plastic trash is burned in open pits, at low temperatures, releasing into the atmosphere a wide assortment of toxic chemicals, including ones that affect the hormonal systems of animals. Effects include genital abnormalities, sterility and obesity. Obesity has now reached epidemic proportions in many parts of the world, affecting not just the humans but other species as well. Here, then, is our future: chemical plants continue to churn out synthetic materials, most of these find their way into the environment and slowly break down, releasing their payload of toxins. As this happens, people and animals alike turn into obese, sexless blobs. First they find that they are unable to give birth to fertile male offspring. This is already happening: human sperm counts are dropping throughout the developed world. Next, they will be unable to give birth to normal male babies—ones without genital abnormalities. Next, they will be unable to produce male offspring at all, as has already happened to a number of marine species. Then they go extinct.

Note that no disaster or accident is required in order for this scenario to unfold, just more business as usual. Every time you buy a bottle of shampoo or a bottle of water, or a sandwich that comes wrapped in plastic or sealed in a vinyl box, you help it unfold a little bit further. All it takes is for the petrochemical industry (which provides the feedstocks—oil and natural gas, mostly) and the chemical plants that process them into plastics, to continue functioning normally. We don’t know whether the amount of plastics, and associated toxins, now present in the environment, is already sufficient to bring about our eventual extinction.

But we certainly don’t want to give up on synthetic chemistry and go back to a pre-1950s materials science, because that, you see, would be bad for business. Now, you probably don’t want to go extinct, but if you decided that you will anyway, you would probably want to remain comfortable and civilized down to the very end. And life without modern synthetics would be uncomfortable. We want those plastic-lined diapers, for the young and the old!

This leaves those of us who are survival-minded, on an abstract, impersonal level, wishing for the global financial, commercial and political collapse to occur sooner rather than later. Our best case scenario would go something like this: a massive loss of confidence and panic in the financial markets grips the planet over the course of a single day, pancaking all the debt pyramids and halting credit creation. Commerce stops abruptly because cargos cannot be financed. In a matter of weeks, global supply chains break down. In a matter of months, commercial activity grinds to a halt and tax revenues dwindle to zero, rendering governments everywhere irrelevant. In a matter of years, the remaining few survivors become as Captain Cook saw the aboriginal Australians: almost entirely inoffensive.

One of the first victims of collapse would be the energy companies, which are among some of the most capital-intensive enterprises. Next in line are the chemical companies that manufacture plastics and other synthetic organic chemicals and materials: as their petrochemical feedstocks become unavailable, they are forced to halt production. If we are lucky, the amount of plastic that is in the environment already turns out to be insufficient to drive us all to extinction. Human population can dwindle to as few as a dozen breeding females (the number that survived one of the ice ages, as suggested by the analysis of mitochondrial DNA) but in a dozen or so millennia the climate will probably stabilize, the Earth’s ecology recover, and with it will the human population. We may never again achieve a complex technological civilization, but at least we’ll be able to sing and dance, have children and, if we are lucky, even grow old in peace.

So far so good, but our next example makes the desirability of a swift and thorough collapse questionable. Prime exhibit is the melted-down nuclear power plant in Fukushima, Japan. Contrary to what the Japanese government would want everyone to believe, the situation there is not under any kind of control. Nobody knows what happened to the nuclear fuel from the reactors that melted down. Did they go to China, à la China Syndrome? Then there is the spent nuclear fuel pool, which is full, and leaking. If the water in that pool boils away, the fuel rods burst into flames and melt down and/or explode and then, according to some nuclear experts, it would be time to evacuate the entire northern hemisphere. The site at Fukushima is so radioactive that workers cannot go anywhere near it for any length of time, making it rather fanciful to think that they’ll be able to get the situation there under control, now or ever. But we can be sure that eventually the already badly damaged building housing the spent nuclear fuel will topple, spilling its load and initiating phase two of the disaster. After that there will be no point in anyone going to Fukushima, except to die of radiation sickness.

You might think that Fukushima is an especially bad case, but plants just like Fukushima dot the landscape throughout much of the developed world. Typically, they are built near a source of water, which they use as coolant and to run the steam turbines. Many of the ones built on rivers run the risk of the rivers drying up. Many of the ones built on the ocean are at risk of inundation from rising ocean levels, storm surges and tsunamis. Typically, they have spent fuel pools that are full of hot nuclear waste, because nobody has figured out a way to dispose of it. All of them have to be supplied with energy for many decades, or they all melt just like Fukushima. If enough of them melt and blow up, then it’s curtains for animals such as ourselves, because most of us will die of cancer before reaching sexual maturity, and the ones that do will be unable to produce healthy offspring.

I once flew through the airport in Minsk, where I crossed paths with a large group of “Chernobyl children” who were on their way to Germany for medical treatment. I took a good look at them, and that picture has stayed with me forever. What shocked me was the sheer variety of developmental abnormalities that were on display.

It seems like letting global industrial civilization collapse and all the nuclear power plants cook off is not such a good option, because it will seal our fate. But the alternative is to “extend and pretend” and “kick the can down the road” while resorting to a variety of environmentally destructive, increasingly desperate means to keep industry running: hydraulic fracturing, mining tar sands, drilling in the Arctic and so on. And this isn’t such a good option either because it will seal our fate in other ways.

And so it seems that there may not be a happy end to my story of The Five Stages of Collapse, the first three of which (financial, commercial, political) are inevitable, while the last two (social, cultural) are entirely optional but have, alas, already run their course in many parts of the world. Because, you see, there is also the sixth stage which I have previously neglected to mention—environmental collapse—at the end of which we are left without a home, having rendered Earth (our home planet) uninhabitable.

This tragic outcome may not be unavoidable. And if it is not unavoidable, then that’s about the only problem left that’s worth solving. The solution can be almost arbitrarily expensive in both life and treasure. I would humbly suggest that it’s worth all the money in the world, plus a few billion lives, because if a solution isn’t found, then that treasure and those lives are forfeit anyway.

A solution for avoiding the sixth stage must be found, but I don’t know what that solution would look like. I do find it unsafe to blithely assume that collapse will simply take care of the problem for us. Some people may find this subject matter so depressing that it makes them want to lie down (in a comfortable position, on something warm and soft) and die. But there may be others, who still have some fight left in them, and who do wish to leave a survivable planet to their children and grandchildren. Let’s not expect them to use conventional, orthodox methods, to work and play well with others, or to be polite and reasonable in dealing with the rest of us. Let’s just hope that they have a plan, and that they get on with it.

20 Comments on "Orlov: The Sixth Stage of Collapse"

J-Gav on Tue, 22nd Oct 2013 11:51 am 



Orlov presenting himself as the raving optimist – LOL. I like his wry sense of humor. I’m broadly in agreement with him in this article 1 – as he points out that choking the life out of oceans is not a very clever idea; 2 – Failing to take the primary economy into account (aka “ecosystem services”) as we hurtle towards some sort of unraveling is the best way to ensure the worst outcome.

ghung on Tue, 22nd Oct 2013 1:03 pm 



I think Dmitry is a bit depressed about his new boat. That said, I’m afraid he’s spot on. We’re largely clueless and/or in denial about how much damage has been done to the biosphere.

eugene on Tue, 22nd Oct 2013 1:32 pm 



Sometime ago, a person asked me what I thought and I answered: not a prayer. To myself I think: so what, just another species gone.

bobinget on Tue, 22nd Oct 2013 1:38 pm 



This is what has become of optimism, these days in the E community.

I do agree with Pogo and Orlov but prefer solutions instead of rehashing problematical futuristic
collapse analogues.

rollin on Tue, 22nd Oct 2013 2:09 pm 



Finding and implementing solutions is a great human pastime. However, the track record of solutions is that they end up causing multiple problems and predicaments.

One day, if the species still exists, humans may realize that the workable solutions were all found long before intense intelligent brain function developed. Nature works, human endeavor appears to solve specific problems and causes general havoc and disaster.

GregT on Tue, 22nd Oct 2013 2:46 pm 



If more people were aware of the gravity of the situation, more people would be searching for solutions. It is somewhat difficult to find a solution to a problem, when one does not even know that the problem exists. We need more Orlovs with more collapse analogues to wake more people up.

That being said, I agree with rollin. Our solutions would probably cause more problems than they would fix. I am sure that we would once again look to human technology for our answers, instead of looking to the Earth’s natural ecosystems. The very flaw in OUR nature, that created all of our problems to begin with.

Maybe it really is too late, but that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t try.

poaecdotcom on Tue, 22nd Oct 2013 3:27 pm 



“more people would be searching for solutions”

The only ‘solution’ is collapse.

Individual betterment is hardwired, ‘tragedy of the commons’ is not.

If the solution is collapse and the solution is inevitable, then the onus on individuals, family and small communities is to best prepare for mid 19th century life.

Go local, go quickly.

Pops on Tue, 22nd Oct 2013 3:42 pm 



Yes, our success is the cause of our problems. It is a strange predicament in that what worked ’til now to make our life better is working now to make it worse, the more we try to fix things the broker they get.

ghung on Tue, 22nd Oct 2013 4:00 pm 



@poaecdotcom- That’s pretty much the best that I could come up with; pre-industrial preparations with a few industrial age improvements such as glass for passive solar, a more efficient wood heater, and insulation. It’s more about reducing one’s consumption levels and staying relatively comfortable while watching things play out from the cheap seats, as I don’t really expect these things will ‘insulate’ us from the consequences of our collective madness.

At one point, Leanan over at the Oil Drum suggested we may as well party on since none of these responses are likely to make much of a difference, but I never enjoyed that party much.

Gotta go split some wood. Our first freeze is forecast for Thursday morning.

Northwest Resident on Tue, 22nd Oct 2013 5:19 pm 



I agree with Orlov. I hope that somebody has a plan, and that they just get on with it, soon. To me, healing planet earth and ensuring the survival of the human race is priority number one. We already know that the world’s population cannot be maintained for much longer, and that the longer we attempt BAU to maintain that overpopulation, the worse it gets, day by day. Whether I and my loved ones survive to be a part of the aftermath is secondary, though I do have my hopes and have made preparations. I just hope that we get started with whatever it is that is going to save planet earth and humanity, the sooner the better. It just has to happen.

ghung on Tue, 22nd Oct 2013 5:45 pm 



@Northwest Resident- What sort of plan allows for dramatically reduced population and consumption and provides for the dismantling and management of our nuclear legacy for centuries+? This is the dilemma we find ourselves in.

As Orlov suggests, it won’t be a nice plan; perhaps unleashing a virus that selects for intelligence and compassion towards others and our environment? Wipes out 90% of humans while preserving all other forms of natural life? The remaining 10% will be pretty busy cleaning up the messes we’ve made.

The nuclear time bombs we’ve distributed around the globe have built-in deadman switches. Meanwhile, there’s a push to build more of these things.

When have we ever had a plan that actually worked?

Northwest Resident on Tue, 22nd Oct 2013 6:10 pm 



@ghung — I hear you. I personally cannot conceive of “a plan” that doesn’t involve apocalypse of one variety or another. If they’ve got a virus that saves just the best 10%, they better make sure that a high representation of nuclear and radiation remediation experts are included, because those experts are going to be sorely needed. Ten percent still standing and dedicated to cleaning up the messes made by humanity would be a good result, in my opinion. I’m just hoping with Orlov that somebody has a plan. If there is No Plan and TPTB are going to just drag us along with BAU until the bitter end, then maybe humanity deserves extinction because our “best and our brightest” will have failed us horribly.

poaecdotcom on Tue, 22nd Oct 2013 6:26 pm 



I would love to see a peer reviewed assessment of worst case scenario of a nuclear plant meltdown. Any pointers?

I have heard ‘credible’ accounts of a 100-300 mile death zones and particulate matter that ‘really sucks’ for a wider area but not the clearing of hemispheres.

vulcanelli on Tue, 22nd Oct 2013 7:31 pm 



What is happening is not the result of a plan and what is going to happen is not going to be the result of a plan. What is happening is just life and life does not have a plan. A plan presupposes some desired outcome. What could be the desired outcome of life? This is hard for some to comprehend because we are trained to believe there is a reason why things happen. While life does not have a reason it does follow its own rules. One rule is that any population of organisms that exceeds their food supply has a die off. Food for us must include the energy sources they are now dependent on.

Sheila Chambers on Tue, 22nd Oct 2013 10:07 pm 



I’m afraid it’s too late to avoid a collapse. Too many people who believe in impossible things will not act to change their way of life until it’s forced upon them.
We will continue to scrabble for as much fossil resources as possible until it becomes too expensive.

I still read of people having large families because of their religion, our “leaders” continue to push for more growth as a “solution” to our problems.

Even as the ocean dies, we continue to drag the ocean for the last of the fish even as radiation from Fukushima continues to pour into the ocean making fish eating very risky.

We needed sex education, birth control,abortion and to end tax incentives to have children but the religious “conservatives” have successfully fought against it and continue to fight against anything that might stop population growth so we are doomed.
The governments are so corrupt that they continue to act against the best interests of the country and our world.

The dollar will fall, food prices will climb along with the price of fuel, unemployment will rise even higher and civil unrest will end the American experiment.
When the power grid fails on the east coast, it will be hell to exist in the big shitties, the masses will migrate and small towns will be overcome by the masses. The government might speed things along by releasing militarized germs to cull the expendable excess humans.
When the dust has finally settled, there will be no “America” left, just small settlements that are self sufficient divided into territories/countries.

No more cars, air conditioning, electric lights, radios etc, just a 17th century existence and no hope for a “better” future.
Party on while you still can but reduce your carbon footprint anyhow. It’s better to reduce our destructive ways than to give it up as hopeless.

HARM on Wed, 23rd Oct 2013 3:07 am 



Good post, but could the editors please introduce Mr. Orlov to paragraph breaks?

BillT on Wed, 23rd Oct 2013 3:09 am 



Sheila, we agree. There will be little left in ANY Western country. If you look at the locations of most of the nuclear plants in the world, they are located in or on waterways connecting with the oceans of the world, or on the beaches. The flow of radioactivity will continue as long as there is rainfall to feed the rivers. We are subjecting the lungs of the world to nuclear cancer one dose at a time, continually. That cannot have a good end.

Stephen on Wed, 23rd Oct 2013 9:05 am 



It will be the test of mankind to decide how to handle a problem this large. It will take abandoning “corporate profits at all costs”, and a signifigant reworking of the landscape, as well as reducing use of nuclear fuel, and stop polluting (even if it means having less energy to go around), to have a chance. The plan that will preserve the greatest amount of life and put our planet in a healthier place will not have economic growth, a price tag on each item, nor be very profitable for the richest 1%, and will require a very different city design with increased farmland closer.

Now, choosing it takes a lot of human willpower as species? Can we do it?

Ghung on Wed, 23rd Oct 2013 1:07 pm 



As a species, there is no “we”, except in the sense that ‘we’ will all suffer the consequences of ‘our’ explosive growth stage.

Simple simon on Thu, 31st Oct 2013 3:09 am 



The last productive use of the fossil fuel inheritance we have thrown away may just be to use it as rocket fuel; go and grab every bit of nuclear fuel and fire it off to the sun. Let’s get this crap OFF the planet ASAP. A payload for a “space craft” that has the payoff of saving millions and millions of humans – and lots of other species as well.
Mr Branson? NASA? Hello, anyone??