Ecolate Party Platform

Enough is enough, or politics as if reality mattered

'Seek out the condition now that will come anyway.' —Howard T. Odum^ref

ecolacy /ikolə.si/
n. the quality or state of being ecolate.

ecolate /iko.lɛt/
adj. 1. systems science literate. 2. the endeavor to iterate towards understanding the dynamics of the world system through the macroscope of systems ecology to account for the complex interdependencies that underpin the natural environment and to consider the unintended consequences, short term and long-term, of changing the system by asking, 'And then what?', so that we may come to have enough humans on the planet that really do understand it and can live with it properly.
n. a regional management unit; Earth has seven globe ecolates with 30 sub-regions or sub-ecolates/sublates that contain hundreds of watershed management units or home ecolates (abbrv. homlates, e.g. 'I live in the Chetco coastal homlate in West Northern America in an area that used to be called Oregon'.)

The three pillars of education are literacy, numeracy, and ecolacy [systems science literacy—a recognition of the centrality of energy principles], or the endeavor to love and understand language, number, and system over self. Some will embrace the quest to iterate towards being literate, numerate, and ecolate—to listen to Nature who has all the anwsers. Of the three, ecolacy alone is essential for the long-term survival of humans in Nature. The intelligentsia of industrial society are partially science literate, commonly innumerate, and cluelessly unaware of being inecolate. [e.g. on May 16/17 2018, the media was abuzz with 'news' that federal officials at the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) reported the extension of a 'deep' decline in US birth rate that 'began' in 2008 with the 'Great Recession'. The only population related problem that can be envisioned is the failure of millennials to have enough babies to ensure economic growth without increasing immigration. The word 'plummeting' is favored, and hundreds in the media, mainstream and social, reported on this dire issue of concern (google). Zero note that the drop is part of an ongoing US trend since 1971, is insignificant, and not nearly plummeting enough to matter as the total US population growth rate is 0.7 percent despite the below replacement birth rate, which would double US population in 100 years IF GROWTH COULD BE MAINTAINED. So zero grasp of the planetary predicament, hence the ‘news’ is, as usual, literate by wordsmithery standards in terms of telling people what they want to hear using words they like to hear, but largely innumerate, and utterly inecolate. Virtually all who 'inform' are university educated and are as inecolate as are they who read their prattle.]

Eric Lee, A-SOCIATED PRESS

TOPICS: TRANSITION NOW, FROM THE WIRES, LIVING THE SUSTAINABLE LIFE, SHALL ALL CANT, THE ANTI-PARTY PARTY, THE MOVEMENT TO END ALL MASS MOVEMENTS

Abstract: After reading the Green Party Platform the question arose as to what a systems science literate platform might look like. A complex society, democratic or otherwise, that selects for its own failure... fails. Humans don't get a vote. Within any given management unit, whether a watershed, nation-state, or planet—a democratic poll could determine the per capita consumption, but not the population of pets, livestock, or humans being supported by environmental resources and services. For determining matters of preference there's democracy or opinion polls. For everything else there's naturocracy whose naturcrats listen to Nature, which excludes listening to the demands of Anthropocene enthusiasts. Once a naturocracy is established, the Ecolate Party, as the anti-party party that does not traffic in pretend political 'solutions' nor religious 'salvation', will become history.

TUCSON (A-P) — Consider this page a door and what follows to be 95 theses nailed to it. Time for an ecolate reformation for a prosperous way down (in terms political animals speak):

Humans don't get to define who or what is 'ecolate'; they don't get a vote as only Nature does as the millennia pass.
To iterate towards ecolacy, to live long and prosper as a species, listen to Nature who has all the answers.
The Ecolate Party is about real systemic solutions, so no one is allowed to join the Party or Ecolacy Movement: You can be ecolate, but you cannot join.
All would-be ecolate candidates shall run as independents for one term on their own merit as evidenced by their life of system service.
All having ecolate concerns are to protest the unsustainable denial and failure of communities to provide sustainability education, to be part of a New Education system that enables humans to think about real solutions.
We Declare our independence from all SYSTEMs of Growth and Exploitation for its own Sake.
All political parties, to such extent as they can be tolerated, shall be marginalized until eliminated.
In the USA the Ecolate Party will be tolerated until a 67+% majority of ecolate candidates can be elected to Congress to hold a Constitutional Convention to rewrite the Constitution. Equivalent plans shall be made in other countries prior to their dissolution.
Until a sufficient majority of Ecolate candidates are elected who can change the SYSTEM, all shall, if elected, refuse to serve in a SYSTEM dominated by business-as-usual types as they will have better things to do to foment revolution.
An unowned free press serving the planetary system, including citizen journalists, shall endeavor to subject all post-truth claims and public information to the flames of their all consuming doubt and inquiry. Eternal vetting, tireless fact checking, being the price of free speech (free to iterate towards a fragile grasp of reality).
A self-correcting system of vetting the vetter shall endeavor to identify those members of the Press (including citizen Press) whose higher than average error rate suggests they seek to serve the system in another capacity.
The economy is a subset of the 'world set', a subset of society which is a subset of environment—and not the other way around. The environment is not an 'externality'.
Humans and their social, material, and energy systems are natural... humanity is part of Nature. Coral reefs are natural, built by natural organisms, as are cities of wire and concrete. Nuclear bombs are natural.
Though not selected for, cancerous growth is natural, for a time.
Minimize per capita consumption of planetary resources: Rethink, Reevaluate, Refuse, Regulate, Reduce, Repurpose, Reuse, Reclaim, Reciprocate, Recycle.
Initially, over a five year period, rapidly reduce global average consumption by ~45% [~80% in high income countries].
Choiceless obedience to the nature of things.
Question everything, reevaluate all values, iterate towards maybe knowing.
Though grim, we strictly obey the Second Law of Thermodynamics (et al.).
There is no 'sanctity of life' other than as asserted, but there is a sanctity of carrying capacity.
The educational system is dysfunctional; specialized silo studies serve short-term human interests, and almost all the 'highly educated' are systems science illiterate, not to mention innumerate.
All education is environmental education—the endeavor to understand system over self.
'The Economy' is not about the flow of money enabling production and consumption for humans, more being assumed to be better. Conventional economics is pretend science.
Production and consumption are to be limited. There is nothing desirable in consumption per se. The less consumption in a Society of Enough, the better off we are.
Humans must come to know their needs from their wants to persist.
Real wealth is having enough needed (as distinct from wanted) resources, and real wealth will 'fall apart' as things do, per Second Law of Thermodynamics.
Candidates claiming ecolate concerns shall be vetted by the public and their intelligentsia who are in turn vetted.
Identity politics, politicians, active members of any political party, ideologues—all who believe in political solutions, being anathema, shall be marginalized and compassionately offered cognitive therapy freely and without duress.
Matters of fact shall not be voted on.
Matters of opinion shall be voted on by those who demonstrably know enough to have an opinion.
Matters of taste shall be voted on by anyone who can indicate a preference as per current SYSTEM (aka democracy).
Humancentric democracy to be replaced by naturocracy—strict obedience to the nature of things, to the contingencies of sustainability/survival that humans cannot make go away by voting their deeply held beliefs.
All candidates are also educators, and when a 'teachable moment' arises, foundational change becomes possible..
All forms of ideology, superstition, belief-based certainty, and faith-based assertions (e.g. neoclassical economics, religious 'salvation', and all political 'solutions') shall be forever separated from planetary policy making (aka the Separation of Fake and State).
Having separated church/temple/mosque from planetary policy based on love and understanding of what-is, ecolacy demands the separation of politics-as-usual also.
Choiceless obedience to the nature of things, to what works, over and above like and dislike, pick and choose, praise and blame, cling and reject, being for and against—shall inform planetary policy making.
Keep your eyes on the ball: Don't be distracted by political 'solutions' or religious 'salvation'. Face the biophysical realities that determine the endgame.
To moderate the pace of planetary destruction, de-grow industrial economies by 80% in five years.
To avoid conflict, from interpersonal violence to warfare, secondary to scarcity, real or perceived—or a manufactured longage of demand—an equitable distribution system shall be instituted among those who prefer peace with their prosperity of enough, to provide all with 'just enough' to slightly more than enough as alternative to the death-spiral of civilization as usual [Tainter: The Collapse of Complex Societies] given that conflict wastes energy/resources thus causing more scarcity/conflict.
During societal endgames, the current one being global for the first itme, conflict has no positive outcome; the 'winner' merely inherits the rubble. Better if actual Copykittens were to inherit the Earth.
A global moratorium on all fossil fuel use in five years via a decrease in production of 20% the first year, 25% the second, 33% the third, 50% the fourth, 100% the fifth to achieve 0 global use by end of fifth year.
To enforce the global moratorium on fossil fuel production (no production = no consumption), the IMF (Illimitable Mother Force) will bomb coal mines and tie the tubes of all oil/gas fields that may exist at the end of the fifth year.
A remnant use of fossil fuels may be turned into food to avoid famine during the rapid depopulation of pets, livestock, and humans if necessary.
Population policy: to forestall an increase in the death rate by war, murder, suicide, abortion, famine and infanticide; to rapidly transition to a maximum population of enough, instigate a rapid birth-off to a global population of 35 million in 50 years.
Initially one in two hundred women who want to give birth will, and in 50 years, women will have on average 2.1 children.
After a population of 35 million is achieved by natural attrition in 50 years without war, plague, genocide, or other increase in death rate, a further but less rapid reduction will lower the human population to a level that no further human caused species extinctions occur (likely in a range of 7 to 35 million) and new species can evolve to replace lost biodiversity.
Ecolate populated areas (watershed management units) will maintain a sustainable footprint to preserve functioning complex societies and information, while Malthusian deaths depopulate non-ecolate control areas with loss of functional society and 90% to 100% of information.
No grain to be fed to livestock and no agribusiness production of hay on land that could grow grain.
Only breeding populations of livestock to be maintained on peripheral agro-ecosystem production and only aging non-reproductive animals or culls among breeding populations consumed for food.
Rangelands managed, given that almost all rangeland is historically degraded, so measurable improvement (e.g. soil building, species diversity) occurs from decade to decade.
All surplus grain production and grain that could be grown instead of hay to be put in multi-decade storage to support surplus non-breeding human population to avoid Malthusian deaths/chaotic-die-off during transition.
If having 'enough' is = 1, and 'just getting by, thank you' is = 0.8, then elite consumers may have up to 1.2 before being prosecuted for overconsumption.
Establishment of universal poverty (the ecolate life that obeys the Second Law in which no one has more than 1.2 times enough).
To moderate per capita consumption, an initial global maximum wage of $15/hour, which even the most progressive judge to be enough, to be lowered until per capita consumption equals sustainable environmental productivity.
Average wage will initially be $12/hour (15/1.2) and minimum wage in industrialized countries will be $9.60 (12x0.8), to be lowered over a five year period to the international minimum wage.
Initially the maximum paid hours worked per year will be 2,000 hours (8 hours/work day), with 1,600 hours (6.4 hours/work day) being 'enough' and 1,200 hours or 4.8 hours per work day minimum.
All unearned income taxed at 100%.
All personal income over $30,000 per year taxed at 100%, and as corporations insist they are people too, none shall profit more than $30,000 per year.
A global shared military to prevent all empire-building, all territorial expansion—civil war is a local matter to correct mismanagement.
Nation-states and other sovereign territorial management units shall not exceed an averaged radius of 100 km, shall not exceed 3.141592 million ha (7,759,733 acres) without United Federation of Watersheds (UFoW) approval.
All borders between management units shall follow watershed boundaries and shore lines of rivers, lakes, and seas so as to be of manageable size (see above).
To leave room for Nature: the human footprint—its developed areas—for industry, plant and animal mutualists, and transportation corridors, shall not exceed 20% of a watershed management unit.
All developed built-upon areas shall have a minimum 5 km buffer area and all roads shall have a 2 km buffer area between the human boot and Nature's 80% that can, but need not, be used for agriculture (including forestry and grazing) and recreation.
To preserve diversity, no more than 80% of any biota within the 20% claimed for human use can be developed for agriculture or other use other than human visitation.
All citizens to spend a period of time, totaling not less than a week, visiting, per leave-no-trace permit, Nature's 80% at least once in their lifetime.
All groundwater pumping (non-human-powered) banned.
Produce needed items locally, allowing for repair, using a minimum of imported components.
Endeavor to 'know' (iterate toward) reality without believing in it. Stop believing in belief (abeliefism).
Form circles of abelief based on free inquiry.
Base interwatershed trade on equitable emergy evaluations measured in emdollars.
Transition form economies to eco-nomies and to managed commonism.
Begin Nature Restorancy by removing debris from former lands of Tairona civilization to repair the Heart of the World.
Apply information and energy to expand our refuge of beneficial order instead of starting a conflagration (e.g. empire-building) and hoping for the best.
Gifting eco-nomy based on reciprocal altruism within self-organizing, cooperative, ethic-driven social orders of less than 150 members.
Use AI assistance to help make up for human intellectual deficits (e.g. climate and other system models are AI).
Allow anyone, using reason and evidence, to challenge the AI.
Place the 'common interest' above 'human interest' to protect the planetary commons.
Encourage individual, family, and community urban micro-farms.
Favor tiny modular one room mobile houses.
Replace arms races/acquisitiveness with arms reduction—from handguns to thermonuclear weapons.
Share, preserve and add to information, know-how, and designs without proprietary claims.
Favor open source endeavors by ignoring proprietary ones.
Replace resource exploitation (economy) with shared environmental mutualism (eco-nomy).
Realize that the mature phase of the capitalist growth system is its climax. And then what?
Tax consumption of wants rather than income unless over $15,000/year.
Preserve individual mobility—the vote-with-your-feet option.
Watershed boundaries open to travelers for the time needed by the elderly to walk or be pushed across.
Provide employment through public works programs (a living minimum wage).
Distribute necessities via a rationing system by issuing non-transferable coupons (pons) instead of money.
Raise the fractional reserve requirement for banks from current 3-10% to 100% to deflate debt-money that allows the growth economy to keep on keeping on (for a time).
Marginal costs of growth, having exceeded benefits, continued growth is making the planet and humanity poorer, not richer. All are becoming poorer as the moneyed rich get more moneyed.
Eliminate early retirement and encourage part-time work for elders, especially in education.
Provide social security and a universal public baseline health care system.
Put community needs before individual wants.
Participate in the global democratic meritocracy (Federation), ruled by natural laws, as a citizen responsibility.
Develop a post-car culture valuing low-power transportation options striving for efficiency rather than speed.
Treasure genetic and cultural diversity that is not too maladaptive.
Develop smarter machines, not more powerful energy consuming ones.
Provide citizens a minimum living livelihood.
Realize overpopulation (people, pets, livestock) is ultimately a local watershed issue, not a global one.
Reduce local population in a humanitarian way via attrition and birth pons until supported by low-intensity agriculture or hunting and gathering.
Remove all incentives, dogma, and approval for excess reproduction of people, pets, or livestock.
Limit livestock feed to available farm produce (weeds, insects, human food rejects and waste) not consumed directly by humans.
Emergy flow and sociopolitical organization to evolve in harmony. ['Human societies and political organizations, like all living systems, are maintained by a continous flow of energy. From the simplest familial unit to the most complex regional hierarchy, the institutions and patterned interactions that comprise a human society are dependent on energy. At the same time, the mechanisms by which human groups acquire and distribute basic resources are conditioned by, and integrated within, sociopolitical institutions. Energy flow and sociopolitical organization are opposite sides of an equation. Neither can exist, in a human group, witoout the other, nor can either undergo substantial change without altering both the opposite member and the balance of the equation. Energy flow and sociopolitical organization must evolve in harmony.... A society increasing in complexity does so as a system.... at some point in the evolution of a society, continued investment in complexity as a problem-solving strategy yields a declining marginal return.' —Joesph Tainter, 'Understanding collapse: the marginal productivity of sociopolitical change', chapter four in The Collapse of Complex Societies]
Reduce salaries and wages as necessary to maintain full employment.
Eliminate all forms of in-your-face advertising.
Mandate all media be ad free and prohibit commercial media ownership (internet, airwaves....the Info Ether).
Provide belief therapy for those suffering from fixed conclusions.
Maximize public/planetary benefit instead of maximizing monetary profit to individuals/corporations.
Restore wetlands and riparian areas.
When dams silt in allow them to become waterfalls or remove them.
Harvest and collect rainwater for all water needs, including irrigation.
Celebrate rainy days as holidays.
Operate low-intensity aquaculture ponds and constructed wetlands.
Replant forests and rebuild soils.
Restore reefs, eliminate jetties, and remove or set levees back from rivers or shore.
Provide educational facilities for self-paced, self-directed learning with assistance as needed.
Teach children how to think, inquire, figure things out, and not what to think.
Tailor curriculum to counter temporal blindness (lacking temporal causal cohesion).
Provide educational daycare for small children.
Children may not consent to self-harm, e.g. genital mutilation, skin mutilation, non-medical psychoactive recreational drug use.
Children may not be deprived of baseline medical care or education access, even after they grow up.
All children and other autodidacts to have access to Rosetta Bliss and all communities of 50 to 150 people to have a copy of Encyclopedia Bliss.
Keep education facilities for young humans open through normal adult working hours and open to adult autodidacts at other times.
Devote public works programs to assist environmental restoration over the coming millennia.
All able citizens, for the air breathed, a place to stand, and water that falls, shall serve public works programs to aid Nature Restorancy.
Find glory in being an Agent of Earth.

Note: I am not a party member. I'm not democrat, republican, libertarian, socialist, progressive, communist, humanist, oligarchist, anarchist, ecolatist.... I support all of the Ecolate Party's platform line by line, though not in the order given, and so will share the platform for consideration. I don't do identity politics (or identity religion), nor see political movements as corrective (e.g. Earth First!). The Green Party platform is politicking as usual whose narrative appeals to a different self-assured (as usual) minority/would-be majority. Political ideologues/followers (the 99%) need to realize that none of the above has anything to do with what people want, or what I want. It's not about like or dislike, praise or blame, being for or against. The universe doesn't care what I want, and perhaps thee is not exceptional either. Non-belief-based policy needs to reflect what might actually work over the long span of time (to be sustainable, as in to not destroy the life-support system). The laws of thermodynamics, and others (e.g. ecological system energy laws), apply to humans, says Mother. They do not go away because we are ignorant of them (though they may appear to for a time until corrective feedback loops emerge). Overshoot is followed by descent, and this is not an opinion. Your vote doesn't count. Ecological systems science is our best shot at understanding what we need to know/do to live as responsible members of our planetary life-support system. When it becomes obvious to those not paying attention that we are not living sustainable lives, the above may be considered. Until then, political animals can have 'I believed what I wanted to! Forget posterity, what did they ever do for me?' put on their tombstone. You can't join the Federation, but you can be Federation. You can be ecolate. You can ask, 'And then what'?

For those not paying attention, the most significant event in the history of humankind occurred about 1950 when the slope of the curves plotting global growth exceeded, on average, 45 degrees. A small fraction of 1 percent of humans, by the end of the 1950s when the trend was obvious, asked 'and then what?'. In the short term, in terms of everyone's self interest, growth was the best thing imaginable, and to those still getting richer in the 21st century, growth is still unquestionably good.

The question of 'and then what?' entails foresight intelligence. Humans who 'can actually think more than a decade ahead' could foresee limits, overshoot, and descent. They wrote a number of books and millions read them; they gave lectures, but there were no solutions acceptable to political animals, so each Anthropocene enthusiast, to continue to serve the 'monetary culture' and prosper, came to not think ecolate thoughts. Individuals who have foresight intelligence and ask 'and then what?', are few, are unable to serve the SYSTEM with enthusiasm and self-select out of working to grow industrial society empowered by the fossil-fueled economy (for a time) to unintentionally create humans of NIMH.

To 'destroy industrial society' (and any foundational change will be perceived by the Business-as-usual Party, i.e. all politically active parties, as an existential threat to their 'SYSTEM') we can but 'iterate towards' real solutions, perhaps winning the race between education and catastrophe. To that end, educators run for office to educate, and when the public, whether by voting or by revolt, demand real change, either ideologues will crawl out from under every rock to offer 'solutions' or those who 'can actually think more than a decade ahead' will have developed an ecolate plan, a set of policies that might actually work, beforehand. Scholars, scientists, engineers, and educators will have spent years (those that remain) trying to explain biophysical reality to other clothed apes, and will at some point be in a position to say, 'We told you so'.

The public and their intelligentsia will look, with that deer-in-the-headlights look, to those who may actually know enough to have an opinion as to what to do. In less than a year, an historical heartbeat, support for the Ecolate Party Platform can go from < 1% to > 90%. With a sufficient mandate (perhaps secondary to some disaster), Constitutions can be rewritten, new forms of governance can be instituted, and a global Federation of Watersheds formed as alternative to chaotic unmanaged descent. When humanity, the Euro-Sino Empire, goes over the apex of its growth trajectory and is looking into the precipice towards likely horrific collapse (a 'zombie apocalypse' where some end up eating or being eaten by others—or worse, e.g. we loose the memetic information content of the past seven thousand years), then real change conceivably can be implemented to move towards real solutions. Ecolate candidates, if elected as a minority, will not serve the SYSTEM. Initially, secondary to our collective unconscious agreement to deny biophysical reality, all candidates and protesters, acting solely as independent concerned humans, can expect some fraction of 1% of industrialized humans to support them.

What can you do? Protest/Inform:

Protest and run for office. A worthy goal to consider would be to spend 1,742 hours (in honor of Al Bartlett) protesting/informing for sustainability (and against denial) given that the alternative, unsustainability, has a bad outcome as in end of empire or worse. 'Protesting' for 1,742 hours in one year would be a little more time than the average European works and a little less time than the average American (in USA) works or watches TV. Spread over two or three years, the 1,742 hours becomes hobby time. Assume five hours/day average (average American watches TV five hours a day meaning half watch more, arguably time less well spent than endeavoring to save the world). Average people in industrial society are plugged in, Borg-like, into some sort of media 12 hours a day (5 hrs. TV, 2.1 hrs. radio, 1.7 hrs. social media leaving 3.2 hrs. for other media, at times more than one, browsing online and off including print publications). A year of daily protesting, with 17 days off for doing other pointless things, is doable. Or protest seven hours/day five days a week and get 115 days off to fiddle while Rome burns. Or spend an hour a day over five years and have more time to fiddle. When your grandchildren ask, 'So if scientists warned us repeatedly since the 1960s, why didn't Grammy do anything?', someone can say, 'Well, she did protest for 1,742 hours and....'.

Start with messages such as —

The poster is 22" x 28" standard, parts: (clink for full size, right clink to save, then print and go forth).

Tear offs, just have to cut down middle, then across both sides to make 46. Larger images such as a two-part 20" x 8.5" or 27" x 8.5" legal size can be printed and pieced together.

A 22" x 8.5" sign with just the large print main message can be seen by traffic when walking or biking on side opposite the larger sign. This maximizes effectiveness of signage. On windy days the small sign is more manageable, and enough. The small print is readable up close by walkers not speeding past.

Assuming public transport is taken to protest sites (could be counted as part of the five hours) and the protester qualifies for economy fare, $1.30/day for two way trip x 348 days = $453 ($1,218 regular fare) to see what happens. Maybe a donation jar for bus fare would help as would walking and biking. There are only about 3,000 cities in industrial societies with populations of 150K+ to protest at in the world, so if only 3K+ people out of 7.4 billion (aka the 0.00004%) were to protest or 740,000 protested in more cities/towns (the 0.01%), then some people will notice. If a tiny fraction of 1% of humans were to look for and face reality (as if it mattered), and were to dedicate one year, with 17 days sick leave, protesting for 'sustainability', then maybe enough people will have considered sustainability issues such that, post-collapse, enough will be willing to consider becoming ecolate non-consumerists willing to live a life of enough.

You can't join the Ecolate Party, but you could protest our collective denial of Mother's laws for a year without being a part of any movement. Or you could spend the same amount of time on social media as many do (teens spend up to nine hours/day on post-truth social media — minds in denial are terrible things to waste, especially young ones). Endeavor to save the world one mind at a time, starting with your own. While 'protesting', read books. Assuming you only read 50 books a year, read well selected books and endeavor to think well. There is no life sustainable for hu-mans without ecolate thought (maybe).

MAHB

Those who can't live without joining a 'movement' or dying for a cause, should at least do so in good company. Perhaps 'join' the Millennium Alliance for Humanity and the Biosphere (MAHB) to turn things around before it is too late. They are on a mission, which can be boiled down: Can scientists and 'civil society' use 'foresight intelligence....to ensure a sustainable and equitable future for all' by reducing 'humanity's ecological footprint and social inequities before it is too late?' Assume 'Yes'. How? By understanding and communicating foresight intelligence to 'create a vision of a plausible and compelling world in 2050 which is moving towards sustainability and social equity.'