THURSDAY, NOV 3, 2022: NOTE TO FILE

Towards Real Solutions

We don't know enough to know that it is too late

Humanity’s future will be defined not by expansion, but by contraction.

"Our principal constraints are cultural. During the last two centuries we have known nothing but exponential growth and in parallel we have evolved what amounts to an exponential-growth culture, a culture so heavily dependent upon the continuance of exponential growth for its stability that it is incapable of reckoning with problems of non growth." — M. King Hubbert, "Exponential Growth as a Transient Phenomenon in Human History"

Eric Lee, A-SOCIATED PRESS

TOPICS: BAD NEWS, FROM THE WIRES, WORSE NEWS

Abstract: This missive is a clarification of recent notes, a train wreck of apparent conditions that significantly raises the bar to achieving any real solutions to the problem of getting humans to again live right with Mother (Gaia, the world system). If the overshoot debt we moderns have been enthusiastically incurring for centuries has posterity's extinction as the outcome, then a passing exobiologist from Omicron, noting the geological layer that contains radioactive compounds and microplastics has only one interpretation: a biotic form had used technology to turn eons of stored hydrocarbons into an energy pulse) about a million years before the Omicron's visit. Her concluding thoughts are, after a quick surface penetrating scan finds many ruins (confirming the hypothesis), that as usual, the species (as yet unnamed) was apparently too clever by half and not nearly smart enough to persist. But we humans don't know nearly enough to foresee our likely future, our fate, the outcome of our enthusiasm in five years, let alone a million. Yes, we can each believe in any future we want to. But expecting what we firmly believe to be true has the slightest effect on the outcome is to be fallibly human, for a time.

COOS BAY (A-P) — If 1972 was humanity's 'Humans, we have a problematique' year, then the message of what a few already knew became known to 'the world', or at least to anyone who wanted to know that 'the world' had a meta-problem that needed to be solved (to avoid civilizational failure). Mission-message delivered.

The message was summarized and restated in one book in 1980 (Catton's Overshoot: The Ecological Basis of Revolutionary Change). The world's response, a deafening silence (continued business as usual), was the climax of the World Socioeconomic-political System (WSS). From posterity's point of view, it was life on the downslope thereafter even if for deniers per capita consumption continued, for a time, to increase.

Of course it took a few decades for some to realize that there would be no solution. Those who persisted in believing that humanity had a 'problematique' continued to equate humanity with modern techno-industrial society (MTI aka WSS), the global monetary culture all served and were products of, and so they wanted to save it by tweaking it so it could work sustainably forever. They wanted to fix the MTI/WSS monetary dynamic to be viable.

That the MTI/WSS dynamic was foundationally non-viable, selected for its own failure and the destruction of a planetary life-support system, was not considered (beyond a passing smile and perhaps roll of the eyes at the very thought). The 99% of the other Anthropocene enthusiasts, by the 1990s, had come to a different consensus narrative: Problematique? What problem? Yes, Aldous and Julian Huxley (and that Malthus dude) had concerns about 'over' population (and Musk thinks depopulation is a greater threat than climate change), but thanks to the modern education system, we know that the total fertility rate is declining and so what if we have to stop using fossil fuels? We'll drive Teslas that 'peel the edges of your face back' due to their ability to accelerate so fast. If you think 'over-acceleration' is a problem, then work through the democratic system to limit acceleration on public roads if such is your fancy. If you want to limit car rights, what next? Are you against human's rights? Such thinking precludes 'real' solutions.

The sea change in my inquiry this year seems to have been triggered by the word 'ghastly' used in a journal article of, by, and for science types, a word infrequently used by those who endeavor to be objective. The adjective modified 'future', so the idea was that humans may be facing a 'ghastly future' by seriously underestimating the challenge of avoiding what some could foresee 'with blinding sight' by 1972. The authors and publisher were giving expression to old concerns using desperate words because most of humanity ceased to even be aware of any scientists' warnings after the 1980s [Underestimating the Challenges of Avoiding a Ghastly Future 2021]. The World Scientists' Warning of 1992 was an attempt to alter the trajectory of distraction (and failed). Denial has crept in everywhere into the consensus narrative on little cat feet as the need for it has grown to ghastly heights of error, ignorance, and illusion. [1]

It seems we moderns are merely the latest expression of an expansionist form of human. If it was just that Modern Techno-Industrial (MTI) society was not viable long term, then correcting for the errors of a millennium of missing the mark (failing to live so as to persist long term as the epochs and perhaps eons pass), then we could aspire to return to an agrarian form of civilization that was viable, at least prior to becoming too complex, prior to becoming unsustainable chiefdoms, kingdoms, city-states, nation-states, and alliances/pacts that select for unsustainable empire building, with possibly one exception that we moderns have nothing to learn from. [2]

Merely returning to pre-empire building agrarian ways will not be nearly enough. A likely story is that the Indo-European expansion started more than seven thousand years ago in the steppes of Central Asia. The Proto-Indo-Europeans, whose languages most speak and almost all who do not have been culturally subsumed by, may have been pastoralists in southern Anatolia, northern edge of the formerly Fertile Crescent, who domesticated cattle 9k to 8k years ago and expanded as pastoralists into the steppes of Asia to devise cattle-drawn cart technology to become expansionists extraordinaire 7k years ago. But the Indo-European and Māori expansions are merely among the more recent expressions of the expansionist form of human we are that goes back at least 50k years. [3]

Expansionist forms of a species may be selected for (as invasive species) for a seemingly long time, in our case 50k years, but Nature traffics in eons, and invasive species, only common in modern times due to us, do expand and prosper, but only for a time. Some species serve as primary successors, and others as secondary successors to enable ecosystem recovery after frequent natural disasters, but one-off plague-phase overshoot is a disaster for the invasive species and biome exploited, with a few exceptions such as locusts who have overshoot adaptations.

One-off expansion unto overshoot has no adaptive outcome for an invasive species (or metastatic cancer that expands and prospers for the same reason). We are nearing the climax of our global expansion/succession. For humans to renormalize or go extinct are outcomes, are equally viable outcomes for life on Earth if not for humans. All regional endeavors to renormalize post-expansion have so far not conferred resistance to future ghastly expansions. Underestimating the challenge of renormalizing as a K-strategists having a potential for expansion (but ability to resist, to manage human demands on Nature's resources) may be to lock in failure for posterity to persist in any viable form. [4]

The climax of our MTI (Modern Techno-Industrial) form of civilization could be viewed as coming when births equal deaths, when our population climaxes. When did the reindeer on St. Matthew Island, St. Paul Island, or St. George Island climax? The point of maximum population seems obvious, objective, and that humans are still adding 83 or so more humans to the planet each year suggests we are still far from climaxing.

We actually climaxed when any possibility of our seeking out the condition now that will come anyway, i.e. when effectively responding to our overshoot condition by rapidly contracting our population and economy, was no longer an option. That condition was about 1980. I found this idea shocking, but further consideration has not made it go away, but only to become more obvious. If the carrying capacity of reindeer on St. Matthew Island, was maybe at most 1,200, then a biologist tasked with managing the reindeer population when it was at 1,000, would have removed any additions by culling or introducing predators as any increase beyond 1,200 would, by definition, result in degrading the islands productivity, reducing the number of reindeer the island could support. Surveying the island and noting 5,639 reindeer would suggest culling the population to well under 1k to allow for recovery of the island's degraded primary productivity. More than 50 reindeer could be too many to allow for recovery, and if not, centuries could be required before the primary productivity of the island could again support 1,200 reindeer. A population biologist who was not a reindeer (or at least was an objective reindeer) could act to maximize reindeer prosperity long term as the millennia passed. Getting the 5,639 and growing reindeer population to vote for rapid degrowth might work if reindeer are smarter than humans.[5]

That today's human (product of MTI education system) is less able to think about carrying capacity, overshoot, and collapse of populations (today the consensus narrative is that humans are not animals, are exceptional, and have decoupled from nature) than in 1980 is not obvious to those who have been on the receiving end of a proper MTI education, formal and informal (e.g. Sunday school, social media). That the form of civilization they are products of and serve is not remotely sustainable, and that our collective capacity to understand our condition peaked about 1980, is quite beyond thinkable to all who have yet to walk away from Omelas. [6]

If the last 42 years have been on a downslope, if Catton's Overshoot summary was climatic, it suggests that the endeavor to understand the human predicament persisted among individuals, such as Catton, but that their numbers have overall declined. Indeed, Catton went on to publish Bottleneck: Humanity's Impending Impasse in 2009. Our understanding can improve and improve our chances of finding a way out of our coming impasse.

Our collapse and dissolution have not happened yet, so that there could yet be a way out is to consider, however unlikely we may be to avoid a ghastly future. We may yet seek to mitigate the ghastliness of posterity's future. Catton yet continues to inspire air, and yet works to help posterity mitigate the ghastly future we Anthropocene enthusiasts persist in locking in the extent of. [7]

A conference meeting in 2013 was described by Catton: "After reading over this session program, and having downloaded and studied some of the items from the links therein, I am convinced this may well be the most important session at any academic meeting this decade -- so I regret all over again that I'll not be there. Please encourage anyone your emails can reach to do such downloading." [List of session program/articles Catton referred to]

As Jack Alpert, session organizer, noted:

There is something very crazy going on at this meeting

Most of us know, just from our narrow research areas, that our species (and many other species) could experience die-off or extinction this century. Some of us believe that without a technological miracle, our kids could starve to death, die in conflict, and even cannibalize one another.

The FAO told us 60% of the global population does not have enough to eat to fully develop minds and bodies. The UN told us, lifespan for most individuals on earth is determined by scarcity.

Most of us expect deliveries of non renewing resources to drastically diminish this century. We expect climate change to further diminish the earth's supporting services. Some of us believe that this reduction will have two effects.
1) the economically powerful will buy up what would otherwise reach the markets of the poor—leaving billions without sustenance.
2) the scarcity will cause social conflict.
The conflict will consume resources creating more scarcity and more conflict. This death spiral will collapse civilization.

Many of us know the human footprint is too big. Given our lifestyle, the human population (with loss of fossil fuels) will soon be 150 times too big for the earth to sustain. Even if everyone lived more simply and more equitably, the contraction of footprint and the increase in fairness would not change these expectations. Only a much smaller population could produce peace and sustainability.... More

This conference, like most of its predecessors, will fail to present either an integrated image of the human predicament or mechanisms to unwind it. Instead the presentations predominantly focus on analysis defining a sub-predicament that if solved would not change our rush to tragedy.

Yes, the human predicament (defined by overshoot) is larger than our funders wish to contemplate. Yes, the unwinding of overshoot includes intervention into personal procreative behaviors which are driven by genetics and protected by culture.

And finally, we know that if humankind cannot find a way to limit an individual's hierarchical success, the resulting scarcity will bring down civilization. In spite of these inhibitions, the BPE/USSEE conference's session, "From Overshoot to Sustainability," will discuss what will probably unfold this century and what behaviors (unacceptable as they are) have the power to alter course.

The United States Society for Ecological Economics (USSEE) and BioPhysical Economics (BPE) conference attendees were all invited to attend to hear from the 14 others who were to present (Jack Alpert, William Catton, Paul Chefurka, Elliott Campbell, Peter Goodchild, Nate Hagens, Charlie Hall, Michael Klare, James Künstler, Dennis Meadows, George Mobus, David Pimentel, William Rees, Joe Tainter). The crazy thing that happened on the way to what 'may well be the most important session at any academic meeting this decade' was that, except for Jack Alpert, virtually nobody came. Many were called, some could not come, but for whatever crazy impasse, most who could be there self-selected out of being there. If every single human on the planet had been personally invited to attend, or read the papers in their native language if they couldn't, perhaps the outcome would have been the same. Perhaps, since about 1980, humanity is not listening.

Jack has persisted since, continues to offer sessions at conferences (I've been to two) and online (in addition to producing videos). Interest in what those who would rather know than believe think they know has not been on the increase. You can still read and consider the conference that might have well been the most important session at any academic meeting of that decade or this century. You can face reality (that 'which, when you stop believing in it, doesn't go away'), but only on Jack Alpert's website. [8]

For a better overview, watch Jack's 60 minute video: A non-injury producing Civilization.

What has become clearer is our collective blindness to what is in front of our pug-nosed faces, the triumph of obfuscation, error, post-truthism, willful ignorance, and our enthusiasm for illusionment. We are on a downward spiral, yet we have not reached peak population or peak denial (likely to come in that order). When our collective denial becomes obvious, we will be dead men, women, and children walking. Our overshoot debt, payable by mass die-off, will be locked in. Not good news for 10 year olds. Sorry about that.

What comes with clarity is frustration, perhaps a sense of tragedy (of 'the solemnity of the remorseless working of things'), but with understanding comes insight, a clear vision of real solutions that nobody can choose, i.e. rapid population degrowth, faster even that the contraction of our global economy, With understanding comes choiceless awareness. Is understanding spreadable? What if reading one book was enough to change the trajectory of humankind? What if there were one book to bind them all, to inform posterity? Who would read it? Among the teaming billions, likely some would. Will the few be enough to pass through the coming bottleneck, enough to self-organize a viable civilization? I don't know, and you don't either. [9]

So what is the condition that stands clear before our pug-nosed faces? Humans are animals, and modern humans are dysfunctional animals. To renormalize, we products of society's education system need to walk away from it by ceasing to believe in it. As we lose our illusions there be tipping points. Our capacity to believe in belief will falter, one inquiring mind at a time.

That humanity was in a race between education and catastrophe was clear to H.G. Wells in 1920. Educators and the educated sometimes like to quote him to imply that but for them, humanity would be facing catastrophe. If women were not educated to serve the economy, then fertility rates would not be falling and there might be more to worry about than climate change or meeting all of the UN's Sustainable Development Goals on time.

Actually, Wells viewed the education system as the greatest threat to humanity, as foundational to foreseeable catastrophe. The solution he envisioned was a New Education system replacing the Old Education system. The race was between implementing the New Education system before catastrophe, before the Old Education system, formal and informal, was replaced to enable a new form of civilization, a form that was viable, that didn't select for catastrophe, to arise to replace it. In 1933 Wells outlined a future in which a New Education system was the change needed to avert catastrophe. It was still not too late. By the end of the 1930s, even the idea of a New Education system was unthinkable to all properly educated political animals. The race was lost. [10]

My guess is that Jack Alpert's design for a viable civilization is not being given due consideration because those who are educated, and those who educated those who educated (schooled) them, learned willful ignorance from taking in the consensus narrative of modern techno-industrial society more or less with their mother's (or bovine's) milk. We are educated to not see what is in front of our face, but to sing a collective siren's call of certitudes. Jack cannot be certain that billions will die ghastly deaths this century, so believing minds can dismiss, can believe what they want as they are free to imagine a better, not so bad, future.

So like the astronauts on Apollo 13, we of Spaceship Earth have a problem that threatens our ability to persist, to return to a viable form and place. When NASA's mission control got the message, only one question mattered: what course of action is possible that does not injure the crew, that has a viable outcome? Returning their bodies to Earth would not be viewed as a solution, but as a preference of families to having their bodies remain in the command module in space. If there was a viable idea for their return alive, it wouldn't matter whose idea. If the Russians had an idea, NASA engineers and scientists would listen. That a proposal might work (violated no best guess understanding of how things work) is what matters. Then consider all proposals, rapidly, and pick the top few for detailing and timely implementation. But such is precisely what humanity did not do.

What didn't happen was the very crazy thing. In 1972 humanity got its message. In 2013 Jack and friends offered a reply: Humanity, there is a solution. A few at mission control in 1972 had overlooked the refusal of others (the teeming billions) to acknowledge that the astronauts on Spaceship Earth had a problem, or if they did have a problem, then the laws of the universe disallowed any solutions. Instead, Jack and friends developed a viable pathway having an acceptable non-injury outcome and when ready to present the proposal, humanity wonders why; doesn't listen. Problem? What problem?

And so billions die of scarcity induced conflict and starvation as energy deliveries decline this century. If the downward spiral to see who inherits the rubble has no viable outcome, then what humans did between about 1980 and 2030 will seem crazy, or would if there is ever anyone to wonder why a rapid depopulation that violated only the reproductive 'rights' of of humans was viewed as a greater injury than billions dying in evermore lamentable ways until there was no one left to die during the greatest mass extinction event since the late Cretaceous that came close to rivaling that of the Permian.

But what about those Mets? And the election, did you....

A Real Solution

Based on the work of Jack Alpert and colleagues, what do you tell a grandmother that would make her vote for a social contract that selects for what works to allow humans to persist long term (i.e. vote, including with her feet, to live in a viable civilization). When the failure of modern techno-industrial society (as a form of civilization) becomes increasingly apparent, a new social contract becomes thinkable to more humans. Agree (or not):

1. No human (inclusive of posterity), insofar as is possible by applied human effort, persistence, and foresight, dies a premature death (aka The Prime Directive).
1. The social contract prevents individuals from reproducing at will.
   1. In a steady-state system, an increase in the death rate needs to be followed by an increase in birth rate.
   2. Any reduction in death rate is equaled by a decrease in birth rate.
      1. The Hippocratic Oath selects for human life saving and extension.
      2. The Oath requires that, to first do no harm to posterity, that a pre-reproductive life saved be balanced by one birth prevented, and that illimitable life extension is incompatible with evolvable life.
   3. Birth rate adjusted up or down to follow an increase or decrease (including foreseeable) in regional carrying capacity or change in per capita consumption.
2. Gives private ownership of mass to the next 100 generations.
3. Limits hierarchy through intergenerational wealth dilution.
4. Prevents the consolidation of political power.
5. Maintains minimum basic income (fixed sustainable energy consumption).
1. Provides each individual with basic services (e.g. baseline medical/dental care, access to information).
2. Provides an unrestricted fixed stipend (of discretionary perpons not restricted to a form of consumption, e.g. energy) to each individual.
6. Provides a path for individual achievement.
7. Prevents expansion of human activities into Nature's four-fifths of land and shore.
8. Anabolic processes (bio-production) exceed catabolic processes (respiration and dissipation) in agroecosystems.
2. Those who disagree self-select out of the social contract and social system.
   1. Those who agree, but live in a region where most disagree with The Prime Directive, can vote with their feet and leave.
   2. Those who disagree, but live in a region where most agree with the social contract, can be helped to leave or be shunned.

Pick a binary cognitive pathway, a position to agree or disagree with. The condition is a binary fork that involves two incompatible claims. Whichever you pick, it follows that those who disagree are incompatible with those who agree.  For example, under Pol Pot's social contract, anyone who was literate was an enemy of The People, the State, and would have to be put to death (or emigrate if possible). Agree or disagree. Two outcomes are that all literate people die/leave (none can choose to be illiterate) or all supporters of Pol Pot die or renounce Pol Pot. The two views cannot coexist.

Agree or disagree with the following: No human (inclusive of posterity), insofar as is possible by applied human effort, determination and foresight, shall die a premature death (i.e. your children, grandchildren... the 100th generation will not die a Malthusian death by famine/starvation, conflict, pestilence/disease, poverty, vice/murder/war, misery, stress, calamity/catastrophe, or overshoot debt). Any human who disagrees is deemed insane and involuntarily committed (or allowed to emigrate) until their death or proof of recovery. A viable society cannot be a two-party system divided on this policy. The agreement (the social contract and its details) is called The Prime Directive. The death penalty is retained for only one offence: violation of The Prime Directive. In a normal or healing body, a metastatic cancer is not compatible with existing or world-be normal somatic cells.

If you leave out the "(including posterity)" bit, then only those currently making demands upon Nature's resources matter. The World Socioeconomic-political System (WSS) selects for short-term self interests. Add the parenthetical, and for the Modern Techno-Industrial (MTI) form of civilization you add a poison pill which, if swallowed, has implications fatal to modernity's narrative of life, the universe, and everything. Swallow the poison pill and, for posterity's sake, you will choicelessly change everything.  Don't swallow the red pill, and be revealed as the metastatic agent you have become (given that you were not born that way though your were born having the potential to become that way).

Destroying a planetary life-support system would be a violation of The Prime Directive (TPD). Exceeding the human carrying capacity of the world system, or any portion thereof, would be a violation of TPD. Exceeding carrying capacity is clearly evidenced by causing any species extinction or preventing the evolution of new species over the next 10 to 20 million years to replace lost biodiversity due to Anthropocene overshoot, a condition that is maximally in violation of TPD as overshoot debt will kill billions of those whose ancestors were Anthropocene enthusiasts prematurely.

Violations of TPD are evidence based, not determined by popular vote or opinion. Humans don't get a vote other than on matters of personal human preference. Persisting or not may be a preference (e.g. suicide), but how to persist, what works for a complex society to persist as the millennia pass, is not. A condition of overshoot debt, of a debt payable by posterity in misery and premature death, cannot exist without all possible maximum human effort, determination and foresight applied to correct it, e,g, by rapid birth-off (among those who agree to support TPD).

To reduce posterity's overshoot debt, the greatest possible violation of TPD, the human population must be rapidly reduced to well below maximum carrying capacity to allow for biosphere recovery. [11] Rapid population decline by birth-off (to avoid die-off) works the same no matter what the target population may be (e.g. 1,000 million, 100 million, or 10 million). To allow biosphere recovery (maximum empower for all life on Earth including humanity's posterity), an objective target population may be in the 7 to 35 million range for those not having energy slaves serving them, so an initial target populate would be 50+35 million, the total population that three mega-cities might support (up to 50 million) plus the population of low-intensity forager-gardeners living on a one-fifth Earth to leave room for Nature. Once achieved, then further assessment determines what further non-rapid reduction in the human population may be needed to maximize the carrying capacity of Earth for humans without degrading the environmental productivity of the planet (the MPP of the world system).

If humans had rights, a self-accredited right to reproduce at will would not be among them as all products of the New Education system would consider self-evident. So if you are among those who agree to avoid Malthusian deaths, then implied is agreement to form a New Education system based on a matter-energy systems worldview that is compatible with a viable form of civilization (and incompatible with a modern techno-industrial monetary culture worldview).

 

Another Solution

Do not attempt to reform the Old Education system into its opposite (e.g. by replacing neoclassical economics with biophysical economics). Instead, create a New Education system that makes the old one obsolete (e.g. only biophysical economics is of interest apart from the history of ideas). "That, in essence, is the higher service to which we are all being called." [12]

Form a Union of Concerned Elders with 1,700+ members to select information packages a viable civilization must be informed by (and add to) as the millennia pass. Information packages of the highest transformity cannot depend on advanced technology, but be accessible to humans capable of self-directed learning, e.g. an ability to teach themselves to read a constructed 'algebra of thought' language using only a single volume Rosetta book to learn the language. [13]

The Union of Concerned (for posterity) Elders creates one global Academy (perhaps in Greece) whose members are drawn from the most accomplished members of the Five Ecolate Academies whose members are drawn from the 30 Subecolate Academies whose members are drawn from each Subecolate's Bioregion Academies whose members (in the New Education system everyone is both a student and teacher albeit a first year learner differs from a fiftieth year learner) are drawn from the ecoregional academies whose members are autodidacts all who work without pay. All academies, favorably located on high productivity arable land, are self-sufficient learning communities that work to inform humans living in non-academic management units, how to live prosperously within limits (and why). [14]

 

Before creating any academies, however, the Union of Concerned Elder would convince humankind to support The Prime Directive and creation of three mega-cities within which information (and three academies), including in the form of humans who endeavor to embody essential information packages (and pass on their sapience and knowhow) can persist in. Having all of humanity's eggs in three baskets, however (though better than one global MTI egg), would be too risky, so humanity's information serving academies would eventually number about 25,000 watershed management unit level academies, any of whose learners could end up mostly teaching at the Global Academy (perhaps located in Greece). No sane elder would allow a young'un to die a preventable Malthusian death, nor births to exceed deaths other that to reflect an increase in carrying capacity or a decrease in per capita consumption.

Oh, and how would the Union of Concerned Elders make all of this happen? They would compose a warning to 15 to 19 year old humans and allow them to self-select into the New Education system. [15]

As a result, modern techno-industrial society would become obsolete, and pass away, as they could never agree to TPD, and so all will die rather than understand, even though they would rather be an omniscient conqueror. [16]

Another Story

One SUV with a full 20 gallon tank; gets 19.5 mi/gal. A joy ride at average 60 mi/hr can last 6 hours 30 minutes or 390 minutes.

I wake up with the thought that I am a passenger, to realize that I had been born 15 minutes ago in a stolen vehicle on a joy ride that began about 310 minutes ago (Newcomen invented the steam engine 310 years ago). Childhood seems to have ended. The minutes go by. I can expect to live about 80 minutes (like everyone else), so that means I am the 13th generation to live on the ride. There may have been humans before Car (Industrial Society), but no one can imagine what sort of so-called life they might have lived.

Everyone in Car talks excitedly about which direction Car should be going in the next 4 to 8 seconds and how fast (which determines how much fun everyone will be having, how much money each will make). Whoever is driving just tries to do what the majority seem to want at any second. If the next few seconds go well, the driver takes credit, and if not, someone else in the front drives (it is a two-steering-wheel driverocracy).

No one has time to notice the new kid in the car just waking up to adultness. For a few seconds the excited discussion about which way to go and how fast seems to slacken, so I note that while the gas tank may not run empty in my lifetime, that it will. And then what?

No one comments; no apparent interest. After the slightest pause, everyone becomes concerned that the car isn't quite going fast enough and that last bump was unexpected.

The exact speed and direction of the car at any second, and the number, interval, and magnitude of future bumps is unforeseeable, and so I have lost interest, unlike everyone else. Whether the car will become a lawn ornament somewhere or make for a nice chicken coop is of passing interest to me to speculate about, but is also indeterminate and, really, doesn't matter except maybe to posterity if they have chickens.

Only dialing out the time interval to 100-minute intervals seems determinate, even if not to the minute. That everything everyone thinks they know is wrong, that what has been natural and normal for generations isn't, seems worth noting, but again, only to me.

Could there be life without Car? Intentionally stopping of the car is unthinkable and everyone is absolutely certain that no one could or would ever choose to stop Car, and so it never will. Car continues to make noises, but I'm not listening anymore. I'm 35 minutes old.

I ask, 'in the next 60 minutes, how could Car not stop?' One person rolls their eyes briefly, but no one else notices, distracted by a barely discernible bump. I wonder what happens, in the still silence, after Car stops?

About 57 minutes pass. Will the drivers loosen their grip on the wheels and the rest cease to care who happens to be sitting behind the suddenly ornamental relics of the steering wheels? The old story of the last 402 minutes ends with nobody able to believe a word of it. Soon, no one will remember the joy ride. Will there be life after Car? I don't know.

I live a bit longer than average. Car is not moving. In stunned disbelief, no one has spoken. I open a window. For the first time in my life I hear a bird call, and then the sound pines make when no wind blows. I am old. One of the young'uns is just waking up. She asks about the call of the bird. What does it mean?

 

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SUBNOTE TO FILE: 11/11/22

As we are a few days from the UN's population clock ticking off 8 billion as a nose count of humans, I will comment.

My ancestors have been expansionists for 50k to 60k years in various forms. About 9k to 8k years ago my Proto-Indo-European ancestors domesticated cattle in southern Anatolia, the northern edge of the Fertile Crescent (no longer fertile).

They spread to the steppes of Central Asia taking agriculture and bronze-tipped plows with them, invented cattle-drawn solid-wheel carts that vastly increased the amount of stuff they could carry as semi-nomadic pastoralists, and starting 7k years ago they rapidly spread globally. The pattern: first kill the males and breed the females with children learning their language and adopting their cultural norms and values (as evidenced by change in Y-chromosome frequencies).

I view Newcomen's invention of the coal fired steam engine as the start of the Industrial Revolution that consumed a planet for the taking starting 310 years ago, another expression of expansionist culture. While my recent ancestors excelled at taking and expanding, the last expansionists were the Polynesians. Just 500 years ago about 400 Māori 'discovered', i.e. took New Zealand before their Indo-European brothers arrived. In about 120 years, the Māori population was less than 2,000, a very low density, yet they had eaten nine species of Moa to extinction, saving the Indo-Europeans the distraction of doing so.

Yes, with guns, germs, and steel the Indo-Europeans prevail and the 100k Māori present when Captain Cook came have become nearly 900k today. Conquest is good (for humans). It was a planet for the taking and this is the century it will be taken. Some of us may live to see the climax of over 50k years of expansion from a population of 10k to 100k that expanded out of East Africa (as archaeogenetics is telling us).

And what enabled the expansion? An expansionist culture was a precondition. Hominins had technology, e.g. fire and stone tool kits, but while they had spread as K-strategists to the Atlantic and Pacific (first as Homo erectus, then as Homo sapiens heidelbergensis), they did not spread as an invasive species associated with mass maga-fauna extinctions. With an expansionist culture, likely an atavistic patriarchal alpha-male celebrating one, and technology, all humans, except for the Sans and Pygmy of today, descend from a small population of humans in East Africa 50k to 60k years ago who spread aggressively (successfully) within and out of Africa to 'displace' all other Homo sapiens sapiens and all other species of hominin on the planet, not to mention hundreds of species of other megafauna who, as food, were turned into modern humans (Homo sapiens insapient).

Agriculture, the expansion of crops, livestock and humans empowered by consuming them and working some as beasts of burden (and human slaves), was the agrarian expansion (empire building expansion), the main driver of biodiversity loss and mass extinction. By 5k years ago some Indo-Europeans domesticated the horse, learned to milk them (turn milk into people) and invented spoke-wheeled carts (chariots) to aid their expansion (conquest). All other Indo-Europeans soon adopted the horse/chariot technology, and prospered greatly until the Late Bronze Age collapse. The expansionist culture spread despite setbacks, such that those who are not Indo-Europeans (the 46%) either speak one of their 445 languages (including the Indo-Aryan languages) or have been acculturated, subsumed by the monetary culture, Indo-Europeanized, e.g. members of the Chinese Communist Party and those they rule, and the Semites who acquired their religion from the Indo-Europeans (via Zoroastrianism).

We Anthropocene enthusiasts, modern techno-industrialized humans, are the result. If we hadn't learned to turn fossil fuels into food, we would have climaxed our expansionist dynamic about two hundred years ago at a billion and something. But we've been turning fossil fuel into food faster than our population could grow until..., well, about now. The abundance of Earth has been vastly degraded and will not support 1 billion humans who must live without hundreds of energy slaves serving each.

The rate at which the human population could grow was limited. The rate at which it can degrow (if less than 100%/year) is not. The declining fertility rates in developed regions are not due to educating woman to serve the economy as wage slaves, nor giving them political power equal to other servants of the economy, the monetary culture, now global. The more likely reason is denormalization caused by overdensity, overstressed living conditions (GAS, General Adaptation Syndrome, lowers fertility rates in K-strategists because evolution selects for adaptation to minimize overshoot outcomes, always bad) resulting in a loss of functional behaviors (e.g. reproductive) over multiple generations (typically 8 to 12).

We usually clothed products of the Industrial Revolution are about 8-13 generations into the expansion of industrial society (depending on when your ancestors were assimilated, resistance having proved futile), a dynamic that is now global (globalized).

We expansionists are reaching the climax of our succession. Growth is the best thing ever, until it isn't. We won't choose to not turn fossil fuels, directly or indirectly, into food. Among those who have not been denormalized, e.g. most Africans, fertility rates remain high as long as industrial food production delivers food energy. The average age of a European is 42. The average African is 18. In a hundred years most people in Europe may speak a Bantu language instead of an Indo-European language. I'm not saying good or bad. Things change, sometimes in foreseeable ways.

When will less than 5% of people still be eating food mostly made of fossil fuels (like the 99% of today)? I don't know. Details are unpredictable. That fossil fuel energy deliveries will decline is predictable. When will the number of human births equal deaths? Currently births-deaths = about 83 million more humans added per year. When deaths-births is greater than zero there may be over 9 billion people.

Concern about details, however, is a distraction. We Anthropocene enthusiasts have been incurring an overshoot debt payable by posterity (billions die prematurely, not be old age). Most moderns, even in Africa, are still benefiting from growing our industrial economies (all local to national economies are facets of the one interdependent global economy) faster than our population can grow. Short-term self interest prevails. Too few are walking away from Omelas.

Current energy deliveries (and food is the primary driver of increasing population) will decline. Life on the downslope will be quite different than on the upslope. Living on the upslope for 8-13 generations has vastly denormalized modern humans (see mental illness and suicide rates and 'diseases of civilization'), and 13 generations on the downslope may not select for functional, adaptive behaviors (there are no prior examples of this happening, i.e. a marauding horde culture selects for no viable outcome). History (data related to prior collapse of overcomplex societies) suggests that recovery with renormalization is possible, but not an expected outcome. Unmanaged descent is about five times more likely to end in dissolution (extinction) than renormalization as adaptive K-strategists.

Managed descent via a rapid decline in population (via birth-off, initially perhaps 1 birth per 200 women) to avoid a die-off event is possible (and any sane human would preferred it to die-off as usual). How may we avoid dissolution?

If enough humans cease to believe in political solutions, in the political system and its denizens, that would change the rules of the game. Could enough humans cease to believe in belief and listen to Nature instead? I don't know. It may be that humans are 'too clever by half and not nearly smart enough' to persist.

There may be tipping points. Perhaps there are limits to denial. Denial has one predictable outcome: failure to persist. Understanding this could be one's deliverance from denial. To persist, humans must be eager to learn (from Nature who has all the answers). For 375k years our Homo sapiens sapiens ancestors (and for over 6 million years our hominin ancestors...) were eager to learn, did, and thereby became ancestors. That is not how we moderns are playing the game. For the first time, we are playing a global endgame (badly).

 

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