THURSDAY, NOV 4, 2021: NOTE TO FILE
The Malta Solution
Thinking long term past to future
Eric Lee, A-SOCIATED PRESS
TOPICS: MALTA, FROM THE WIRES, END OF EMPIRE
Abstract: Eight years of considering our problematique, 252 notes-to-file (articles/missives/essays), and I recently became aware of the prehistory of Malta (while reading Reg Morrison's The Spirit in the Genes). I skipped the history of Malta to consider the island nation's present state of ecological and civilizational overshoot. The story of Malta's past seems to be a better cautionary tale than Easter Island for we Modern Techno-Industrial (MTI) humans as is its present. We live on Earth Island, but its past to present and probable future is a lot to try and take in. Maybe too much. Overcomplexity allows the human mind to obfuscate and wander. Thinking in small islands, however, e.g. Easter Island, Aipokit, Rathsi, St. Matthew Island, Unguja, and especially, it seems, Malta, helps to clarify the mind wonderfully. Humanity is in need of clarifying our grasp of things present and to come. Realizing that the past to present and future of Malta is that of Island Earth, that we are all Maltese living on a Malta the size of a planet, may be a useful simplification to consider. If you were living on Malta and possessed foresight intelligence, what would you do to help posterity persist? No matter where one lives, we are all Maltese in kind, so what would a Malta solution look like? Assume carrying capacity (without imports (no planes or ferries full of tourists, no fossil fuel inputs, no ships full of shipping containers dock, just sustainable island productivity that humans take no more than a fifth of to leave room for Nature) is 800 people living prosperous lives of enough as the centuries pass. There are 515,000 Maltese today. Degrowth of matter/energy imports and population is the condition that will come anyway given that there are limits (that hubris man, hu-mans, cannot believe in). Assume somewhere between 50 and 500k Maltese become convinced that a managed degrowth to bring human demands into balance with Nature's resources/productivity has the best (in truth the only viable) outcome. If the complex society on Malta can manage to degrow to match and live within environmental productivity as the millennia pass, we could all do so in a watershed nearby via birth-off to avoid die-off. Perhaps we who would have our descendants live long and prosper should consider: The Malta Solution.
COOS BAY (A-P) — Malta past: 5900-2500 BCE (3400 years, 7850-4450 BP, 1,900 years living within limits & 1,500 years as an overcomplex society that selects for pathology and its own failure).
The early Malta inhabitants came from Sicily (inhabited about 10k BCE) some time after 5900 BCE, 80 km (50 mi) by sea to the north. The settlers were Neolithic matrilineal hunter-forager-gardeners. The islands of Malta are nearly twice the area of Easter Island, and were, like Rapa Nui, well forested when the first humans came ashore with crops and livestock. The dwarf hippos, giant swans and dwarf elephants were soon extinct. From 4000 BCE to 2500 BCE complex society arose, megalithic temples with a fertility goddess theme were built prior to Egyptian pyramids. The Ġgantija megalithic temples [e.g. below and take a walking tour] built 3600-2500 BCE are the world's second oldest existing man made religious structures after Göbekli Tepe/Karahan Tepe.
A human ecology view suggests that the first human inhabitants, as an invasive species, may have caused megafauna extinctions as usual (correlation may not be causation), but transitioned to maintaining a stable population as K-strategists bumping up against the island's carrying capacity for about 1900 years (unlike Easter Islanders) by living in small band sized (20 to 50 people as extended family) groups as hunters and low-intensity forager-gardeners of the sort who do not build monuments (likely biologically de facto matriarchal, matrilocal/bilocal, matrilineal as distinct from the feminist myth of 'matriarchal prehistory' narratives, a claim that has of course been throughly canceled).
These early Maltese had crops and livestock, but may have lived like Calhoun's first rats, wild rats who maintained a stable population regulated by overdensity stress (General Adaptation Syndrome), and so did not overpopulate their habitat. Like Calhoun's wild/functional Norway rats, they could have, but did not, overshoot carrying capacity by overgrowth, by deforesting the island for short-term maximizing of agricultural productivity, a dynamic that requires elites and commoners.
Complex society selects for hierarchy and a social system lacking Mothers (a band-sized population's control system). The Mothers (pre-empire building societies were largely not alpha-male warlord dominated patriarchies except where the economy was largely dependent on animal hunting/herding, e.g. the once sparce Indo-European steppe culture that excelled in cattle/horse empowered conquest) are replaced in complex societies by religious/political hierarchical control systems that select for growth. On Malta, later waves of migrants from Sicily likely lead to crowded, competitive overexploitation of island resources (e.g. forests and soils), i.e. to overgrowth.
Domesticated rats and over-civilized (domesticated products of complex society) humans lack sensitivity to overdensity population stress leading to extended over-fertility. Conjecture: Mothers within normal band-size populations, pre-domesticated, are more sensitive to the stress induced by pushing carrying capacity limits (which would be adaptive, selected for, and normalized) and overdensity population stress, which decreases fertility to avoid overshoot. Civilized humans, living in groups larger than 20-50 which agriculture normalized, are not normal, are more prone to plague-phase overpopulation events.
By about 4000 BCE the population was large enough to form unsustainable complex clan societies that select for hierarchies, as at Göbekli Tepe, lead by priestesses/priests with an interest in temple building. The first modest temple building began about 4000 BCE and had become widespread and immodest by 3500 BCE, climaxing some time after 3000 BCE as prosperity gave way to multiple economic, social, and environmental stressors. Growth was based on a gradual spread of agriculture by deforestation and over exploitation of soils until negative feedbacks set in (e.g. soil erosion, declining soil fertility). Growth was not a fossil fueled pulse, and so the pace of change was barely noticeable within one lifetime. Towards the end, megalithic monumental temple building, altar sacrifices, arranging bones in catacombs, and high density living had become normalized (until it couldn't be). We have normalized travel by car and screen time, among ten thousand other things.
Their complex society had no regional enemies and empire building was confined to remorseless expansion of ever increasing extent and intensity empowered by unsustainable farming practices, however slow the pace by fossil fueled modern standards. It was in the short-term self interest of island elites (as predator population exploiting belief-based cognition) to pressure commoners (as true believing prey population) to produce more offerings to provision the temple (and keepers of the temple). There was, near the end, a great acceleration in prosperous (not remotely sustainable) development.
The population peaked some time after 3000 BCE with temple building reaching a feverish pitch in the final phases of religious control system activity about 2500 BCE when complex society collapsed throughout the islands (all temple building ends and not because everybody decided to move back to Sicily). Expansion by conquest was not possible, even if there had been a warrior class, as was leaving a deforested island by wooden ships. The peak population before die-off is unknown, but would have been in the double digit thousands (figure 20k). Fertility cults, priestesses, and perhaps even Mother, gave way to death cults likely dominated by priests.
By 2200-2000 BCE the island was, or nearly was, uninhabited/uninhabitable, i.e. had experienced an Easter Island deforestation/overshoot/depopulation event caused by the slow emergence of 'civilization' pathology. Like rats in a Calhoun experiment, they may have undergone a self-extinction event via a 'behavioral sink' (irrecoverable loss of complex functional behaviors, e.g. reproductive). [This is of interest as humans are now doing an overshoot event globally for the first time, and though a remnant population is likely, they may fail to reboot to live in viable societies, as happened with the Indus Valley Civilization that climaxed about 1900 BCE, dissolution by 1700 BCE, 8 generations on the downslope, i.e. no literate Harappan survived, and the Sea People of the Late Bronze Age collapse whose likely dysfunctional downslope culture failed to persist, is to consider. Dozens of complex societies too isolated to be conquered by outlying empire builders collapsed to self-extinction. A near extinction event and possible, even likely, extinction of humans, is of concern, and if a remnant population passes through the bottleneck, will it ever recover lost functionality if no functional humans (such as there still are any) also pass through it? If there are still humans on the planet in a thousand years, what sort of humans will they be?]
Humans are currently dominating and degrading habitat (mainly by using fossil fuels to turn all arable land into agriculturally productive land and forests into tree farms (while seining fresh and salt waters for food resources for humans/pets/livestock). 
Modern humans are causing habitat destruction for all species globally. Habitat destruction is the major cause of species extinctions. The dominant species causing the destruction incurs an 'extinction debt' (or overshoot debt). The dominate species may seem to be thriving because, for a time, it is, but delayed reaction to habitat loss (whose consumption results in temporary thriving, e.g. the last 300 years of industrial growth) locks in the outcome: extinction following centuries on the downslope of the dominate species (and many others). Extinction debts may be incurred by any dominate species, but human ecologists, for some reason, rarely can consider the possibility that humans are not exceptions. We may 'already be a dead species walking'. Maybe. And so maybe we could be able to think the thought if humans are to persist. What fraction of a fraction of one percent of humans can? Oh, but what, why should I worry even if I'm not 13 anymore?
A depopulated Malta was eventually resettled by Bronze Age warriors, a patriarchal culture who built the fortified settlement of Borg in-Nadur about 1500 BCE after partial environmental restoration/recovery of island resources (in one sense or another, we are all descendants of empire-building Borg culture). If there was a remnant population of prior inhabitants, they had lost or failed to pass on any elements of their culture, i.e. there was also A LOSS OF INFORMATION EVENT approaching or equaling 100 percent as usual. If they had developed a writing system, no literate temple builders survived the overshoot and collapse event. They overshot the island's environmental productivity. We are overshooting Earth Island's environmental productivity and laying waste to a planetary life-support system. Why do we expect a different outcome?
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Malta Redux
William Rees, human ecologist, notes that globally 'a) major changes in consumer lifestyles involving a 40% reduction globally in energy/material consumption per person (80% per capita in high-income countries); b) more equitable sharing of global bio-capacity and economic output; c) a global population strategy to enable a smooth, socially just descent to the one to two billion people that could live comfortably indefinitely without destroying the ecosphere. The overall goal needs to be a smaller, steady-state global economy/society of fewer people living more equitably and securely within the biophysical means of nature.' Malta is a high-income country, so start with an 80% per capita degrowth of the economy. The 1-2 billion global population (20% of current) assumes all environmental productivity, short of destroying the ecosphere, is diverted to support humans (crops/livestock/pets). For long-term sustainability we need to leave room for Nature (i.e. not cause species extinction or prevent respeciation) and the services of a habitable planet to live on that the biosphere provides, so one-fifth of maximum may or may not be too much. A 96% population degrowth, instead of 80%, would be a more objective estimate of what is appropriate. But as with the world, the carrying capacity is determined by regional productivity, and Malta is a lower than average agricultural production area, so a 96% reduction in population cannot be expected. Population density is about 30 times more than the global average. Over half of humans now live in high density population areas like Malta.
Today Malta has a population of over 500k. The agriculture, with less than 600 mm (24 in,) of mostly winter rain, is modern agribusiness/irrigation (where possible) production, dependent on fossil fuel inputs (e.g. diesel, water pumping, industrial fertilizer...). Transitioning back to sustainable low intensity swidden agriculture would support far less than the 4,000 people in prehistoric times prior to the extensive environmental degradation of today that began with over exploitation 4000 BCE to 2500 BCE. If (when) the planes stop landing and ferries stop bringing tourists, and ships stop importing supplies, Malta will undergo a 99+ percent depopulation event even if no one votes for it.
The end of modern techno-industrial (MTI) production and consumption is the condition that will come anyway, if not this decade, likely in a few cosmic heartbeats. If modern Malta ended all imports this year, 99+ percent of the population would leave the islands (mostly peacefully, with increasing enthusiasm) to live elsewhere until they and/or their descendants couldn't. I would advise the people of Malta having foresight intelligence to 'seek out the condition now that will come anyway' [H.T. Odum]. I would also advise the frog in the pot of warming water to get out, even though it feels so good (for a time).
But pick any other place on the planet–the same advice would be in the resident's long term best interest. MTIed (modern techno-industrialized) humans may benefit by considering Malta a better example of what happens when a culture overshoots environmental productivity than Easter Island or St. Matthew Island (or Pribilof Islands). Those living in Malta now, lacking foresight intelligence, will not act because they cannot. If all are part of a chaotic collapse, those selected for may not be viable humans able to persist, to form viable communities/societies even when the population is below carrying capacity, i.e. 500k could become zero via loss of functional behaviors and increase in pathological behaviors, including verbal behaviors (e.g. cognitive pathology, ideology) that empower demagogues.
The now global Euro-Sino Empire will collapse globally due to unsustainable growth/overshoot dynamics followed by decline as evidenced by all prior empires/complex societies. The fossil fueled pulse of matter-energy flows into Malta will fade away (or end suddenly). Island environmental productivity will not support 500k humans. The one-off plague-phase overshoot event and degrowth will be global and will differ regionally only by degree. A 99.8% depopulation event on Malta, if managed, could have a viable outcome (e.g. 800 prosperous and functional humans living sustainably as the millennia pass on an increasingly bio-abundant archipelago).
If unmanaged, everyone tries to live as long as possible, and in the same time period there might be only a 92% depopulation. But extending the die-off without a viable end point selects for self-extinction (continued environmental degradation and loss of functional behaviors while fighting to see who inherits the rubble). During a chaotic die-off, those selected for may fail to persist, may lack viable human norms, e.g. ability to raise functional offspring, even after the population is below carrying capacity (i.e. result in self-extinction of population). Humans having foresight will keep their eyes on the prize and embrace degrowth ASAP.
We are all living on a Malta the size of a planet, but we will leave more impressive ruins. We are now, for a time, a 'superorganism'. The basic unit of society is not a band of (matrilocal/bilocal) related mothers. The basic unit of modern techno-industrial society is the corporation, an amoeboid like dissipative, adaptive, but non-evolvable structure (as distinct from evolvable system) that must keep on keeping on (to 'for a beautiful moment in time' create a lot of value for shareholders) until it can't.
We who are dependent on it, must serve the growth dynamic until we can't (i.e. until we understand it as non-viable). We are the system. There are no good and bad parts such that the bad can be eliminated to tweak the system into a viable one, i.e. into its opposite. The MTI expansionist system we are, the whole overgrowth shebang, is non-viable. Those who are not too dependent on it, who do not believe in it, may be too few (<0.01%, including dependents, maybe 50 at most on Malta) to matter.
Note to posterity: sorry about that. Oh, but 50 is more than 5 or zero, and if they lived by different 'rules of the game' (as non-MTIed ones), they could select for a different outcome. What could possibly make them different? What if they possessed foresight intelligence and came to tell foundationally different stories, ones that Nature tells (e.g. naturcentric, non-hubris, objective, system-centric), stories told with love and understanding such that we can but live by the better view? What if the scientific establishment (funded to serve the MTI system) could (some of them) be shocked into a better view?
From Malta past to present, the question of what 50 Maltese might do to seek out the conditions now that will come anyway leads to The Malta Solution that is unthinkable to MTI humans, almost as unthinkable as the clam that we moderns are just animals (actually we are dysfunctional animals, 'humans of NIMH') whose only hope is to renormalize as evolvable non-empire-building animals, i.e. stand down from our hubris heights.
The amygdalas of all MTI humans react to the obvious truth of our being by shouting in unanimous consensus: 'no, NO, NO!' The solution, degrowth, thus becomes viewed as worse than alledged concerns that we could go extinct, which our continued commitment to MTI culture will select for. If you cannot destroy MTI society, consider walking away from Omelas, or rather, if you see the MTI dynamic for what it is (e.g. not remotely sustainable), you cannot but walk away in choiceless awareness (imagining oneself to be walking away as a true believer in degrowth by choice would be to remain a purveyor of the dynamic).
Lord Man be gone, in his MTI form and all others. His passing is the condition that will come anyway. No one gets a vote. Will any non-MTI humans persist?
Eric Lee
"Go, set a watchman, let him declare what he seeth."
— Isaiah 21:6
Modern science should indeed arouse in all of us a humility before the immensity of the unexplored and a tolerance for crazy hypotheses. —Martin Gardner
[E.g. that complex systems are not only more complex than we know, but more than we (or our AI) can know should humble us; that civilization (empire building/overcomplex society) is not viable may seem crazy (but the hypothesis that non-empire-building complex societies may be viable if of manageable size may not be crazy); that rapid degrowth is the condition that will come anyway (managed or not) should be thinkable; that we are humans of NIMH who must stand down and listen to Mother to persist is evident enough; that recovery of MTIed humans may not be possible, or will take 8-12 generations of bootstrap therapy is likely; that 'eventually we'll have a human on the planet that really does understand it and can live with it properly' is a dream that could come true: or in fewer words, we can 'understand or die'.] Mouse-over unattributed quotes.
Towards Real Solutions
25k of Them
(if we listen to Nature and actually can think about real solutions)
"With the coinage of 'sustainable development', the defenders of the unsteady state
have won a few more years' moratorium from the painful process of thinking."
— Garrett Hardin
Malta's islands are 316 km2 (122 sq mi) in size (including a small island, Comino, of 3.5 km2), totaling about one-fifth the size of or the island of Unguja or about one-sixth the size of the future Coos WMU (Watershed Management Unit) I live in (for a time). With a population of 515k, Malta is over ten times more populated than Coos WMU (but less than Ungua's 735k). This would make a transition pathway to a viable ecological civilization (not dependent on any imports) at least an order of magnitude or two more challenging.
The 50 Ecolate Ones (EOs) Future
Assume there will be no prosperous way down, no managed descent, i.e. that degrowth on Malta will be by die-off like everywhere else. Assume 0.01 percent of current Maltese foresee the condition that will come anyway, but as they number only 50 citizens (including dependents) among 515,000 modern techno-industrial Anthropocene enthusiasts, that they cannot alter the trajectory of climax and descent to come. The condition to come, one of no imports, is much easier to foresee on a small island nation than in other more connected areas of the world. If the Coos economy collapsed, surely the rich Californians would come, buy property, spend money and save us. But thinking in islands helps to clarify the mind wonderfully.
Assume the 50 are of above average education and income/financial means, and that they somehow come to know of each other's existence (because one of them does something that makes him/her known to everyone on Malta who then want to know what s/he had to say). There is no leader and no followers. The position of each is the recognition that there are others (49) who assess their situation, their problematique and that of the planet, in similar terms. They auto-organize to envision a viable plan to preserve a core of functional society and information (including know-how and seeds) intact on the downslope (20 families making bug-out bunkers with lots of can goods and ammo would not be a viable plan as no one is asking, 'and then what?'). The 50 can foresee (if not in the details) what's a-comin', as some deer see headlights, but these 50 deer do something that could have a viable outcome.
They all agree to vote with their feet, liquidate assets and move to a viable area where there is still surface water and arable land not paved over. They built an enclave able to accommodate 500 people. They are 50, but when climax comes, they foresee that some others will then foresee descent and will then be able to abandon modern techno-industrial society by voting with their feet. They will bring some resources, but the 50 will have provisioned the enclave with enough anoxicly stored food and dry goods (in thirty-six 40 foot shipping containers), to support 500 people for at least 50 years. The late comers who are accepted will help defend the enclave during the die-off.
Until climax cometh, the 50 work to acquire, preserve, and share (freely of course) information. Some who become part of the 450 late adapters, will be among those who acquired information that matters from them, such that when the 50 can say, 'We told you so', some hasten to join them for as prosperous a way down as possible. Foresight intelligence is selected for.
Or they fail and the race to the bottom to see who inherits the rubble has no viable outcome. But assume that in 20-30 years there are still 500 (some births, some deaths) in the enclave, and elsewhere 1,500 are still fighting to see who wins.
Within 50 years of climax on Malta, the only people to continue to reject Federation limits and benefits may have moved to Comino Island where they continue to fight among themselves as there are still too many and they cannot prevail over the combined militia forces of all Federation communities who defend any member community the traditionalists may attack. Within two centuries, the remnant population of Comino Island would likely have joined the Federation of Malta Communities.
The 500 could offer an alternative to extinction. Join 'the Federation', practice sustainable agriculture, agree to limits (e.g. on reproduction, resource use and consumption), and be protected from the remaining marauding hordes. The 500, when conditions allow, move out of the enclave to form 10 to 25 viable communities of 20 to 50 EOs (ecolate ones) by extending the protected zone around the enclave. Once established, they invite others, who foresee no future as marauders, to settle nearby provided they agree to (adopt) Federation limits. Foresight intelligence is selected for.
Some agree and enclave boundaries are extended. Those who keep on keeping on continue to depopulate the islands. At some point, as many as could be saved are, which was the intent of the 50 pioneer EOs from the beginning. Their one overarching concern was compassion for the seventh generation and beyond. Posterity needs a habitable planet to live on. Humans as Earth Guardians need to 'find glory in being an agent of the Earth'.
The Billionaire Eco-progressive Colonization of Malta Future
Malta is a nation-state and as there are 2,577 billionaires in the world, a few eco-progressives (aka billionaire survivalists) could buy a controlling interest, own most residential real estate (and media and politicians), and favor other eco-progressives (ever so peaceful and unlikely to eat the billionaires) who agree to adapt and adopt new ways. As a sovereign power, a policy of a rapid reduction of imports could be legislated and enforced. [The Coos WMU, part of one county, has less potential for rapid change.] Soon, no fossil fuels would be imported, nor anything else not needed (people would be rapidly re-educated to know their needs from their wants).
The policy would be to 'seek out the condition now that will come anyway'. Current residents would, during contraction, be given two choices: stay (adapt and adopt new 'rules of the game') or be paid top euro to leave and live in luxury elsewhere. Immigrants from around the world (having foresight intelligence) willing to adapt and adopt could replace them.
Some immigrants, however, would be discriminated against: no politicians, no ideologues, no political activists (e.g. environmentalists, Green New Dealers, XR, IS, DGR... supporters) would be allowed to immigrate to Malta as such are part of the problem and not any real solution (all endeavor, but meanwhile 'the pace of planetary destruction has not slowed'). Within fifty years, Malta could go deep green as 80 percent of the islands are reforested. The pace of island-wide destruction would be reversed.
Over 99 percent of Anthropocene enthusiasts on Malta would likely leave the island voluntarily, welcomed as refugees by other MTI EU countries where everyone knows that life outside of modern techno-industrial society is either impossible or not worth living (e.g. no smartphones, cars, internet or even toilet paper). The government (now a naturocracy), as sovereign nation, would adopt Federation defined limits, e.g. citizens could claim one-fifth of the land area (63 km2 or 24 sq mi.) to be managed for support of humans, crops, livestock, and pets. Humans get to pick the one-fifth, including needed buffer zones, they want. The remainder is left untouched or managed for Nature restorancy, e.g. toxic waste and debris could be removed, but no products, e.g. plants, animals, or minerals, could be taken. For over 300 years MTI ones have viewed Earth Island as a planet for the taking. The EOs endeavor to manage one fifth of the islands (not 'their' islands) so all organisms remain prosperous as the millennia pass.
An ecolate society has to know its limits. If everyone, all 500k people on Malta, choose to stay (perhaps most being recent voluntary eMigrants replacing those who left), they would agree to a rapid birth-off for a prosperous way down (or leave). When global MTI monetary society fails, no Maltese, assuming foresight acted on, dies a Malthusian overshoot death.
Malta has scant products to sustainably export, such as a potentially modest trade in crafts/artworks of the population, and salt produced in evaporation ponds filled by king tides, but there will be no fossil fueled industrial manufacturing, as there is today (for a time while MTI society can keep on keeping on). Hence, virtually no imports, as in ancient times, is the condition that will come. A flow of tourists (and stuff) by plane, ferry and ship is FOR A TIME. Modern overpowered techno-industrial monetary culture will end, so those having foresight intelligence will seek out the condition now that will come anyway.
Prior to island-wide environmental degradation (e.g. deforestation, overcropping) beginning about 4000 BCE, the island supported a population of maybe 4,000 people practicing low-intensity shifting agriculture with limited livestock grazing, likely because they were non-empire-building normal humans living in small groups (considered normal for 375k years) who listened to Mother and their band's Mothers. But they did so island-wide, not on one-fifth of the land, and given the vast loss of soils and lowered rainfall due to deforestation, the islands will support far less than 1 percent of the current population, figure less than 0.2 percent. If the depopulation involves a die-off of residents on the island (because no one leaves and so almost all die on the islands), the destruction of island resources will be vastly greater, as will be the loss of any functioning social order during chaotic collapse (i.e. expect a loss of functional giving/loving/trusting/cooperative/literate humans). The result could be a 100 percent depopulation event as happened about 2500 BCE to 2200 BCE.
The Degrowth Movement Future
But what if, instead of a few billionaires, enough people on the planet came to question the value and viability of growth for its own sake? Barbara Williams calls for Degrowth NOW! and people listen to scientists who explain why. A mass movement arises and enthusiasm for degrowth exceeds even that of dancing around a pink party boat. In seemingly no time, nearly 0.5 percent of humans on the planet long for degrowth (yet no more). But 0.5% of 8 billion is 40 million (including dependents). They are dispersed among the 99.5% and soon realize they must vote with their feet to become a majority somewhere, and all long to, but only 500 thousand have the means and determination to walk away from Omelas (MTI monetary culture). Barbara decides that Malta is a country for the taking and a degrowther consensus forms to make it so. Within five years, EOs have displaced all Maltese who would not/could not change (they are paid lots of money and they get to take their cars with them, at government expense, on the ferry to Sicily).
As imports decline, all agree to as enthusiastically as possible live a different non-MTI life of enough. Among them are 50k especially enthusiastic EO pioneers who form 1k enclaves (containing 36k shipping containers costing less than a year in tourist profits (in the five years before airports and ferry docks are to be closed, tourism and profits increase, funding the transition and 1k provisioned enclaves). Each enclave is prepared to take in 450 others. When all imports end (whether planned or unplanned due to failure of global economy), everyone on Malta not an EO pioneer becomes among 450 EOs who join each enclave's 50 EO pioneers for a prosperous way down via rapid birth-off and rapid re-education in non-MTI life over a 50 year transition during which none would die a Malthusian starvation/conflict death. Those moving to the enclaves would soon form 10 to 25 villages clustered about the enclave (no need to wait 20-30 years for the chaos of die-off to subside). Small gardens would supplement the stored food during the birth-off. As there was actually no scarcity of anything needed, there was no scarcity induced conflict on Malta. Crime was viewed as the bad habits of the few whose behavior had no pay-off and soon became rare (per 'rules of the game', cheaters are selected against where population is small having many repeat interactions). All came to have a life-driven purpose to persist in such a way that posterity could too, to live in a gifting biophysical economy of enough as all but their recent ancestors (last 3k-9k years) had for 375k years.
There is in effect only one Malta solution, but it could take multiple forms. Don't like the above forms? Envision another, but no cheating. The nature of complex systems determines what works. You don't get a vote. So listen; listen to Nature. If posterity prospers, then you listened well.
If Malta Were the Size of a Planet
If everywhere on the planet enough enclaves were built (16 million enclaves, average 640 EO enclaves/WMU) and global food production shifted to producing storable dry goods (shifted away from livestock feed, ethanol and alcohol production), then all humans, assuming all were willing to live non-MTI lives of enough, could be saved from a die-off (if not a birth-off) event.
But what if due to lamentably low demand, only 500 million people are willing to change despite global scientist's repeated warnings? Only one million enclaves would be built and stocked, and on average, there would be 40 clustered in one area per WMU. When the 7.5 billion MTI ones mostly died scarcity/conflict deaths over a 20-30 year period, few enclaves may have been over-run and, per prior agreement and planing, all stored food and valuables, when such loss of an enclave happened, would be incinerated or otherwise demolished. So there would be a high cost to over-running an enclave, but no pay-off. Maunders (takers) would tend to focus on viable targets.
When birth-off ended, the maunding times would be over, the transition would have gone as well as it could. If 40 enclaves/WMU is average at start, by the end of birth-off, 35 would remain inhabited assuming a 20 to 50 community size is optimal for clothed apes as it was for their ancestors. Each WMU resident would also, per ancient tradition, also inhabit a WMU mega-settlement (rendezvous site) centrally located for meet ups lasting a few days or even weeks per consensus about when and how often. The elderly may inhabit the site permanently as a retirement settlement to avoid stress of travel. Relatives provide necessities and the more functional elders could provide hospice care as needed when relatives could not.
Alas, few humans have foresight intelligence, likely far less than 600 million or even 600 thousand (almost all MTIed ones are products of the MTI schooling system). But 50 EOs could turn out to be better than five or zero. If the story involves only the 500 on Malta, none would have been traumatized by the die-off as the others had. They would work to help the survivors who came to join them adopt Federation ways and to recover their humanity. The permitted children of survivors would have many loving grandparents (as it would seem to them) and they would learn much. Those born to marauders would not live long nor prosper nor learn long-term viable memes. Functional humans serve posterity, not the growth hegemon, not even 'the economy, stupid'. If all residents of a WMU could be transitioned via birth-off to a viable condition, then the transition would be much less traumatic and a positive outcome much more likely.
If Malta is Three Islands
Either way, whether 500 or 500k on Malta opt for a prosperous as possible way down, there would, because doing so is what would work (as usual, no one gets a vote), be 1 baby born each month (if 1.0 million enclaves are built to save 500 million people willing to be ecolate, then 3,229 babies are born worldwide per month) because such are the cold equations (sorry about that). In 50 years, the average woman, praise be upon her, would have 2.1 children. In 80 years, all the adult pioneers and their cohort, as many as possible dying a natural death and passing on memes of value, would be history. But in so far as possible, memes of merit would live on to serve posterity (as toxic memes are selected against).
Eight hundred prosperous people would live on Malta who would help reforest Nature's 80 percent (instead of building temples) allowing more rapid recovery in the coming centuries, and all humans would be in recovery from their society's recent past (i.e. prior millennia of overcomplex society). In only 8 to 12 generations, because the trauma of the die-off would have been minimized, descendants would be mostly increasingly functional humans better able to listen to Mother.
Oh, and a few billionaire survivalists and their Praetorian Guards did build their own enclaves covered in solar PV panels. They were overlooked (and pitied) as they helped make the transition happen and in the not so long run of a few decades they too would pass away (like the Roman elites and their villas after the fall). They did serve by agreeing to invest in books. Vast numbers were stored within their villas. Their mansions became public libraries. Information that mattered was conserved. Praise be upon the EOs.
The sustainable prosperity of Malta would serve as an example to others. With guidance of seasoned EOs, a WMU could form on Sicily, and within a century, other WMUs could form on the big island, where fighting over the rubble wasn't working for them. The pattern of what works, of a viable ecolate civilization, could spread worldwide. From 50 Maltese, the new pattern of understanding and living properly with the planet becomes 31 million prosperous humans living as Earth Guardians, on what was once viewed as Cruise Ship Earth, as the millennia pass.
PS: The above future history is as the Maltese tell it. Actually, what may happen is that 50 people do much the same thing, with the same outcome, in the Coos watershed and 58 other watersheds around the planet (average two/sublate) such that the transition would be much quicker if spread from 60 WMUs scattered around the globe instead of one in Malta. So from 60 WMUs x 50 early adapters and adopters (aka the 3,000 EO pioneers), 27 thousand refugee neighbors could be saved, whose ongoing prosperity of enough drew in another 30 thousand humans in 60 watersheds to form the United Federation of Watersheds with an initial population of 60,000 ecolate humans.
Each WMU came to set the pattern for others to form other WMUs nearby, much as the remnant population within each of the 60 founding watersheds had joined the founding community of 500 prosperous (enough) and secure (enough) viable people who left their enclave to form viable communities that other communities of adaptive and adoptive survivors could join. From each 50 EOs, 500 transition to form a core of interrelated communities whose viable pattern could spread until the last to adapt and adopt new ways come to persist. As many as could be saved, are.
Seven Ecolates and 30 Sublates (sub-ecolates)
If three thousand could form sixty WMUs, there is no biophysical law of the universe that says 30k couldn't end up forming 600 WMUs, 20 per sublate (clustered for mutual aid and defense), whose viable patterns could spread until there were 25k WMUs where people lived in harmony with Gaia (and one another) as the millennia pass.
But six (one per habitable ecolate) or sixty might be enough (or maybe just one on Malta or elsewhere). Within each viable watershed management unit, 20 to 50 communities eventually form to auto-organize a viable complex WMU society preserving information packages that follow new 'rules of the game' that selected for an other than MTI/BAU outcome as usual. The average WMU comes to provide for all the needs (if not wants) of everyone, average population 1,250/WMU living in 36 ecolate communities within walking distance of a central mega-settlement occupied for a few days once a month for sharing information, entertainment, and compassionate love and understanding.
Within three centuries, the WMU-ways-what-work pattern could spread and Earth's human population might be as many as 31 million. As people learned to be better Earth Agents, or Guardians, within a millennia there could be 42 million Earth Guardians. Federation embassy's might be interconnected via the Info-Ether (future not very high-speed low-power internet without porn/social media/advertising/selfies/misinformation/disinformation/ideology...) to enable global information exchange.
All who were inclined to be autodidacts, even if born in a hunter-gatherer society, could learn Bliss and become professors at the Federation Academy of Evidence and Reason, or write poetry, compose music, give expression to their inner vision, or tell tales those in the seventh generation would still read. Information can be conserved and continue to be added to. But no one will drive a car (ICE or electric) or fly to Bhutan for an eco-vacation from their solar PV powered transition town. But in the mere passing of a millennia, some may sail to Malta and some may sail away. Some will study MTI history while facepalming.
So from three thousand EO pioneers who managed to take in 27 thousand late adapters and adopters plus another 30 thousand almost too lates, Civ 4.0 begins (maybe), and in 8-12 generations the Transition Ones lay the foundations for Civ 5.0 that is able to remain evolvable as the millennia pass. In less than two million years, when Klaatu visits Earth, she does not see any need to save the biosphere from humans. Indeed, humanity, whose flower and fruit is the United Federation of Watersheds of Earth that manages human demands on Nature's resources, is invited to join the United Federation of Planets (of the local galaxy) who protect life-giving planets as Galaxy Guardians from would-be Borg takers such as early MTI humans nearly became.
[Note: the above are all stories about the future. The future has yet to be. Per the Wayforword Machine, what actually happens is that the 50 EOs on Malta did build their enclave of shipping containers, and a few billionaires did build a few palatial enclaves (where lots of books were stored), and Barbara did lead a contingent of enthusiastic degrowthers to Malta where they were building enclaves when news of a new pandemic reached them and the 59 other groups of 50 EOs building enclaves. It was a real pandemic plague of super-biblical proportions, with a mortality rate of 100 percent. When the plague reached Tanzania, there was no one else on the planet to receive the news. The last humans on Earth came to stand on Unguja, for a time. Nature is unkind, but less so to those who adapt and adopt.]
[The early ecolate came to be called the 'E.O. ones', mindless followers of the eco-fascist anti-human E.O. Wilson who advocated for merely a Half Earth for humanity.
The EOs came to accept the term but translated it as 'ecolate ones'.
Civ 4.x would be transitional, likely taking 8-20 generations by following the prime directive: each generation must objectively become more functional than the last to become Civ 5.0
It's been a long way up as it will be down, see full graph.]
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