Rob’s Comments (group member since Apr 16, 2013)

Rob’s comments from the The Transition Movement group.

First off I would like to thank you Ted for putting in so much effort into the group.
As one member said people contribute to the discussion or indeed read the book only if their interest is aroused enough. Not everyone is turned on by the same thing.
I can only talk for myself but what interests me in a group like thus is the discussion, new ideas and further information in roughly that order.
Going into a tunnel post more later.

And the point is nicely made that once the worlds teeming poor lived as peasants without too much strain on the Earth's system but now they are much more likely to be poor urban dwellers. They could be poor with jobs and some sort of future as the Mumbai poor or the nightmare of the Karachi slums with no jobs, dynamism and no hope.

There is also the section about the ultra orthodox breeding like mad. Later on Weisman makes the point about the poisoning of the environment by using the fact that only 1 in 100 sperm donors have got viable sperm in the major fertility clinic in Tel Aviv.
So are urban dwellers not having kids because of pesticides or because they don't want them?

As I have let the book fester in my consciousness I have a few issues with the book. There are many reasons why people who make up societies don't have kids. I would suggest that post modern societies infantilize young adults until their 30's. I have worked in academic libraries for 20 years and it is a noticeable trend across cultures. If women start having babies at 32 they are not going to have time to have a lot of babies. If you leave it to your late 30's you might be lucky to get pregnant.

I think we sort of agree Jan. Societies don't phase themselves out but I think that a culture or civilization is not biologically determined. The only occasions I can think of when countries have been swamped are the Soviet era population swaps and the invasion of the Americas and Australia by European settlers.

So I have finished the book.
In the end I agreed with the author that slowing or turning around population growth would mitigate many of the problems facing the world. I do worry though would it just mean that people just gobble up those freed resources with more consumption.

I see were you are coming from Jan but the strength of a civilisation comes from its culture not its numbers.
The section about the elderly Japanese farmers was poignant but I could not help thinking 'what about a little bit of immigration Japan?'. Would 50,000 refugees really change Japan that much? Maybe it would but all societies change.
I also have a reoccurring thought about the Romans. They were over run, their Empire was broken up and the western half was smashed but the culture absorbed the invaders and it changed but it was Latin. Is there still a German tribe called the Lombards in Northern Italy? See any Vandals in Spain?
I agree the whole of humanity would be diminished if Japanese civilization disappeared. I don't think it will though because it is very strong and vibrant.

Well the example of Iran is illuminating. Give the means of contraception, women education and a nudge from the government and hey presto! Falling birth rates better than China's.
The "problem" of elderly populations during a population readjustment. Phase is not really a problem of racism
and ethnocentrism. Japan could have a more relaxed immigration system but it chooses not to. It would rather have cuddly robots than Laotians.

I am about halfway through the Philippines chapter. It struck me that the response of Pilipino women is much like that of Western women. If they can get their hands on safe reliable contraception they will use it.
Going back to previous chapters I have also noticed that the most productive farm land often is bordered by natural bushland.
I am glad to see that author is not making a glib case for population control. It is a complex issue with many unforseen consequences. It is also absolutely necessary.

Over all though I find that this author writes very well and there are a lot of ideas that get a good real life focus. It seems a particularly good book. He writes somewhat like Michael Pollan (The Omnivores Dilemma).

Yes, I was surprised by how bad it had become. Although the mad notion of trying to outbreed each other is portrayed as being the main culprit there is a lot more wring than simple over population. Maybe he is setting Israel/Palestine as the worst case scenario.

This chapter was a bit ho hum. Renewable energy is not for free and it will have impacts but nothing compared to global warming.

I think where he is coming from is if we use up all the cheap energy (cheap in the sense that we don't need much energy to produce energy) now and want to convert over to renewables when we only have renewables left as an option then we are in a deep hole.
The state does or can lead in the economy. Germany, Australia and the U.S. are all capitalist countries but it is only Germany that has created the incentives to go towards 100% renewable. It is about 30% (I think). On some days in the past year the whole grid only used renewables.

Yes I too found the early part of the chapter not so much difficult as perhaps problematic. Classical or orthodox economics is certainly not a science so I agree there but I find the energy explanation of debt and the creation of money as, well not entirely convincing. Debt and loans actually do create 'money (or specie)' but not value as such.
The real crux of the chapter that I have no qualms about is the notion that at a certain point the finding and exploitation of fossil fuels (particularly oil) will become problematic.
I have also often thought if our civilization only realises at the end of the easy fossil fuel period that we need to invest in renewable energy then we really have had it. Starting from scratch trying to build up wind or solar energy capacity would necessitate cruel consumer shortages. Well cruel in the sense that unlimited desires have been virtually matched by unlimited production. I don't think coping with this politically is impossible: it would just be undesirable. The format would be a type of Fascism rather than say something like the planned war austerity of war time Britain. I do not think many western societies are as cohesive as they were 70 years ago thanks to neoliberalism. The reaction of the public to being sold a pup for the last 30 years will be rather savage.

" The rarely voiced reality of environmental unsustainability is that we may have not just less prosperous and comfortable lives in the future but shorter and fewer lives altogether."

We will not get a choice about this and it will not be like going back to the 19th century way of living. So the question how as a society do we do this? Do we say gated communities for us and fuck the rest of the society/human race? Even if we were so inclined to do that it would still be a terribly uncertain and horrible way to live. My opinion is that it should be a small and big, that it should be that communities should be self reliant and resilent but nation wide and world wide systems should be the same.

Ok I will kick off the discussion. First off a second reading helped in taking in a fuller understanding of this chapter. I think I will try to keep on reading ahead and then rereading the chapter up for discussion.

Yes there is a heck of lot of sustainababble. I have even heard the mining industry in Australia described as sustainable! It not only comes from the usual suspects like industry and the governing elites but from environmentalists. In some areas principally energy but also other nonreplenishable resources we are going to run out of the stuff that drives this civilization. A crash or collapse is far more likely than a slow controlled decline.
We can't be saved by doing a bit better. We needed a drastic reduction in C02 emissions ABOUT 5 YEARS ago. There is a certain careering internal logic that means instead of investing in renewables there is shale oil mining and fracking going on all over the world. There are tiny sparks of hope such as the German building of a resilient distributed energy network that may well be 95% plus based on renewables by the middle of the century. They are only tiny hints of hope. The much more likely scenario is some sort of crescendo and then a rapid decrescendo or to use the musical analogy more aptly a fortissimo piano to our current civilization. Forissimo piano: very loud and a abrupt change to softness.

It's too late. There is evidence of methane being released into the atmosphere from Siberian permafrost. This the positive feed back run away climate change scenario beginning. When the Earths heating/cooling system becomes activated this is too large a process for human kind to dampen down.

Thanks for asking me to join Ted. I think mid May is probably better for me as well.