Not to say that doom steads and quaint politically correct lifestyle villages are not the answer for some.

But in reality, the change from "oil energy/chemical dependent constant growth or die society" to something more survivable for the majority of humanity might in fact be accomplished.

Has everyone gotten so immersed in their own intellectual superiority over those who fail to recognize the need as to have decided Darwin demands allowing a massive crash and die off instead of simply inventing and promulgating an alternative future?

Just a question the constant "prep for the zombies" thread hijacking has caused me to ask.

How? I'm open to ideas. How do we change the globalized society from unfettered capitalistic greed to society moderation and sharing of... what? Global socialism?

Thud!

I also am open to ideas.. Let's start with that. Does open to ideas mean you will allow others to restate things and then really try to get your thinking into what they were thinking?

Can we touch on any idea ( knowing answers almost always turn out to be a synthesis from varied other disciplines) but always return to a QUEST ( not a statement of a found answer) for a plan that works?

So let's see..

Socialism? You mean socialism by government... That usually is simply disguised personal power schemes disguised as something people would want if it was real.

I myself cant see the government structure as part of the answer that will work simply because there are so many different governmental/tribal/societal loyalties in the world, but what ever answer is found must be applicable in all of them.

The quest here is for a workable universally acceptable solution ( wow that's setting the bar high) being as we at least see the approaching apocalypse.

Unlike the people who claim to have an answer ( redoubt/ alternate life style etc) I am opening a search for a globally sustainable alternative to mass die off and zombie hoards for a future. I have read into and even visited a few alternatives, but the "snap" that's it has not happened for me because I can see no real solution that only saves me and a few others but condemns billions to no future existence as "less worthy" etc.

This is not a one line of code does the trick problem, nor is the real solution one item or one tactic, but I believe it is one idea.

The Earth contains resources, using them up leads to problems in continued existence. The universe contains limited resources, don't stop using local resources at the cost of importing from farther away a similar limited resource.

That is my first try at writing the idea. I am sure the mavens of PO and alternative living have better thought out and written versions.

My question was as a group can WE discover a practical solution or are we as P O people simply supposed to accept the dictum that massive die off must occur but those of us who are knowing can somehow be more deserving of a survival by ( pick your alternative).

Sorry about those old sick and stupid people who are all dismissed into oblivion because we haven't time to actually FIX things just recognize a problem and retreat into our own survival mode?

Possibly this is just an over reaction to all the doomstead appearing on almost every discussion, but I have alway wanted to win against a perceived challenge not just get by.

HM OK a beginning point. Maybe you have explained this a thousand times and due to the volume of posts I skipped reading them? What makes a biological law that says the earth has a maximum sustainable number unless there is cheap oil energy? Does this mean it is a waste of time to search for alternative massive energy? Does this mean the existence of all these billions is some cosmic joke perpetrated by the petroleum god to tease people into some organic collapse if he is not appeased?

Where did I miss the proofs that there is no other method that everyone might recognize and adapt to no matter their political definitions to sustain the number of people existent now?

I think I might be suggesting OUT OF THE BOX searching, discarding "political" as government never seems to solve anything anyway is a common "out of the box" beginning point.

Disregarding also the arcane thinking that there is nothing new to uncover that might help point to a solution. I am asking for volunteer thoughts on where a possible new discovery might come from. Does that make me a cornacopian in your book... How narrow the path seems to be to your temple!

I guess universally acceptable as part of practical that would be adopted might be confusing. I cant see how, but am willing to clear up any ambiguities. A solution that would be anathema to anyone but small groups might work, but would not because it is not universally acceptable be practical for accomplishing a larger group survival.

Just as internal combustion is not universally acceptable for conversion of energy into motion ( but the non accepting minority is small and is somehow able to use many of the benefits of a device they claim to eschew), A solution that called for something not acceptable to large masses due to religious, availability, cost or political reasons will not accomplish the desired effect of my defined plan that works.

There are many plans that would work if they were more acceptable, these while titillating to those who accept them are useless in the course of world history due to their exclusion for one or the other reasons of so many who do exist now and have the same desire and right to continue existence as those practitioners.

Calling them zombies dehumanizes those refugees who are trying to find food for their starving children and aged parents but in reality does not feed the hungry or solve their desperate need, it simply excuses their denial of succor for those who choose to deny them succor.

This thread is intended as an exploration FOR an alternative to massive die off ( oh well you say you have some plan on allowing die off over years, a future I myself do not see possible. It is not an attack on the thinking already existent. Simply a call for a different effort to achieve a different future than the thinking already seems to predict and accomplish.

Yup that kinds of states it in a nutshell. If the end result of all ideas is less fewer and hardship for any who don't go along with... I reject it completely and call for a return to searching for a better answer.

Experts providing unpalatable solutions that include massive death and return to lower lifestyles simply FAIL completely to convince me there is no better solution. Giving up the search for the better solution is easier than continuing the search, and allows those with entrenched positions to consolidate their standing.. However standing alone as a survivor while allowing the real solution to remain hidden is not winning!

( Did I make you uncomfortable...imagine hunger day after day that is real discomfort!)

Did you decide to take your marbles and go home? NO one else can play if you are not the game leader?

How impressive!

NOT!

ps (all the posts are duplicated on my blog including quotes...)

People have been yelling DDDDOOOOOOOOMMMMMMMM!!!!!!!!! about many things in the last 150 years (and longer), they have always given us prophesies about how doom is right around the corner for so long........and yet not a single one of their predictions has come true, especially when it comes to the "looming" resources shortages. All the predictions made by the peak oil super stars (matt simmons and john kunstler come to mind) within the last 5 years hasn't come true.

It's basically a moving goalpost, everytime you get "close" it keeps getting pushed back.

You're welcome to start your own thread, ronin.

Yes, I'm taking what marbles I have left and leaving in a huff.

Have fun!

That's where the problem starts. I don't believe in any of that universalist totalitarian shit. I'm relativist, believing in variance, difference, localism.

That does not mean I would not be open to dialectic between some unversalist totalitarian shit and localism, at least on the level of dialectic of soft landing. What I feel and know is that global/universal ecosocialist(ecofascist) well meaning hierarchy would be a respectable and worthy dialectical opponent of local and genuinely relativistic anarchism.

Thesis, antithesis and synthesis, as the laymans dialectic goes.

As for pragmatic approaches with express time table, I proposed to Al Gore to become the planetarch, to run for president of US, if won then declare Planetarchy, appoing a council of wise men to draft a global plan of survival/soft landing, then put that plan into global referendum, as wide as could be organized. Then if approved to be excecuted. As tyrannically as necessary.

Didn't go that way. I don't consider myself cynical (I did write to Al with best intentions ) but a realist. So, any other and better pragmatic ideas to save the bulk? If not, I'm still into the ecovillage type of seed planting for future generations of human communities... but helpless to save all of the mankind.

Your response and even Ludi's seem both predicated on standing defense for what prior thinking has been published, and slightly based on your idea of what I was saying and asking which do not to me appear to match what I was trying to convey.

See my comment on open to ideas above. The actual exchange of ideas to form a consensus and effect change can be more challenging simply in establishing a viable communication than solving the problem causing the communication.

Universally acceptable ( practical) should convey more "so utilitarian" that it would be usable by the MAJORITY of people rather than the select few. Possibly your ecovillage ideas are almost practical. almost universally acceptable, but they are for now useless to more than a few.
Like ecovillage, the solution will have to adapt to different local conditions, but to actually affect the outcome for large masses of fully as deserving as anyone else people, it must be self salable to a variety and probably self contractible as well. ( simply a point not a guaranteed part of a solution).

YOU say you are willing to settle for planting seeds for future generations, I say to my view that means you give up on finding a more equitable solution for all those others your decision to plant seeds has condemned to starvation. I am as yet unwilling to wave sorrowfully goodbye to so many billion people I have yet to even meet and try to understand.

I originally phrased this in common language, and I will try to continue in common language to avoid the pitfalls predetermined definitions can add to the natural hazards of communicating with someone who speaks like but thinks different ( as we apparently do).

I stated above that government action is not IN MY OPINION either useful nor desired due to both the differences in perceived need for and type of government and to the obvious shortcomings of governmental action as demonstrated on "name your favorite pork disaster".

The real practical universally acceptable actual "plan that would work" must seemingly be either the production of a viable alternative energy source, production and acceptance of some other media of accomplishing mastery of biosphere and production of wealth. ( or possibly a redefinition of wealth ((good luck on that one)) or complete change in the necessity for transportation and distribution. ( that statement deserves challenge and amplification )

Apparently raising anew questions about why some answers simply CEDE some desired results makes me a JERK to some here... so be it.

I believe you started this one and requested I post what I wanted to say here. Now in a huff you delete the title and tell me to go elsewhere.

I think this proves my point about communication and open to new ideas, you think it stands as proof you need not waste time discussing the subject with someone you don't think like. ( maybe you are so beyond the primitive discussion ...?)

A moderator can choose to put back a decent subject, you can repent and at least put back a decent subject line, or if anyone wishes we can continue this discussion as "deleted" in advance memoriam to those billions of not worthy soon to be left behind ( starving is such a brutal description for it) who would have hoped we found a real answer "plan that will work" for them too....

sigh

Ronin,

With regard to what appears to be your underlying assumption here that a 7+ billion world population is sustainable long-term, if we'd just 'figure out how to do it' - here are a couple of things that might be worth considering:

a) If it's physically possible for the planet to sustain such a population, why, pray tell, has it never (at least as far as we know) even remotely approached that level prior to the widespread technological exploitation of hydrocarbon fuels? Two words that might suggest an avenue for considering this particular question: 'Green Revolution'.

b) Can't remember where I first heard (read?) about this particular idea, but I came across it awhile back and it definitely gave me pause for thought. Consider the fact that, at least in any effective sense, there is a finite amount of biomass upon this planet. The more of it that gets converted into human bodies, the less of it there is to be utilized by everything else. What implications might this have for the biosphere at large, and its ability to sustain us?

You seem to me to have the cart before the horse. Placing them that way predispositions the outcome to of the discussion to failure to even look for additional avenues and alternatives to the predisposed ideas we have been seeing for 40 years now. That tactical argument is used by everyone defending the status quo of every "established theory" existent.

Try just once saying it another way.. We do not (because history is in fact simply a collection of local remembrances and not yet fully cohesive even today in the age of the INTERNET) know how many beings have inhabited the earth as a maximum number. Now that statement cant be argued with facts.

We do have a pretty good idea what the sustainability is of our present social structure and technological base, BUT we have no knowledge preventing some other technology or even cohesive understanding of other life styles from achieving a sustainable ecology with any given number of people not based on observations limited by the existence of this social structure we inhabit.

If we admit we do not know what the carrying capacity of the planet is, why should we assume that given a reasonable effort to correct the obvious faulty technologies/lifestyles we are using now we cannot continue to carry the number now existent?

If we wish to carry the number existent we can determine what technologies are in fact working for resource depletion, and what possible avenues of change can be found to correct those deficiencies. Once understood we should be able to design a remedial life and technology adapting the existent structures to ease the transition.

History is full of failed ideas, wars, pestilence, indifference ( oh wait that one is approaching again ( pick any of the for-mentioned).
But history also is a study of mankind's attempts to correct deficiencies overlaid on the the platitudes and chronicling of the rich and powerful.

I agree there is a finite amount of bio massive material building blocks, but cannot see any possible proof anyone might have tried to propose that the present population has used so much of those building blocks that there is not sufficient remaining. Please give more precise details on that?

My underlying point.. that billions of human beings each as valuable to the cosmos as any other deserve the maximum effort to find a way to preserve and augment their existence rather than a constant refrain of "it cant be done" and retreat to your redoubt and the devil take the hindmost I see so often.

A cockroach is a primitive form of life existent unchanged since the age of the dinosaurs, as it dies it lays eggs to hatch in 14 days as a continuation of it's life purposes. Ecovillage for the few kind reminds me of that. An old idea for those who have given up on creating a better world for all.

We should all make plans as best we can, but lets not be so hubristic as to imagine that we can know with certainty what is the "plan that will work".

In human societies, as in biology, it is best if there are multiple variations, survival strategies, adaptations, mutations, etc.

No one can know in advance which political model, military strategy, energy mix, religion, culture, etc. is the one that will be successful, because no one can accurately predict exactly what will happen in the future or what the precise effects of things like oil depletion, climate change, war, economic collapse, mass human migrations, technological advances, etc. will be.

Yes, and they only thrive in northern climes because of human heated habitats. Eventually they will retreat to equatorial regions from whence they came.