The energy generated by the enthusiasm of the 60s was dissipated in the futile life style and political battles that ruled the 70s and cancelled the warning red flags that the 60s generated.
Almost 40 years have been lost in battles that have produced heat rather than light.
If conservation ha taken hold in the 70s, if we had begun to design all non structures with energy savings in mind and pursued an accounting system that measured wealth more in tune with ecological flows and thought in terms of production that recycled everything, and structured our education system in resonance with such ideas, we would be prepared – possibly – to face biospheric deterioration that is coming with ever increasing swiftness.
An old order is dying and we are blindly acting as if it is going to continue into the life of our children.
It will not as the climatic destruction has passed the point of reversal and is now exponentiating into a future that we can barely imagine, though 114 inches of rain in Taiwan and extreme heat and drought have given us a small taste of what is to come.
Science can only take us so far. It can’t map the changes that are coming. They are not linear, but involve deformation, metamorphosis, transmutation and catastrophe.
To many it will seem biblical, apocalyptic, as radical transformations occur before our eyes. What it will be is a system – planetary in extent – collapsing. The collapse is our feedback, our mess, our failure.
It may take centuries for a new equilibrium to be achieved.
We take sunshine and rain for granted, until the suddenly disappear. By the end of August 2009, there had been no summer in Central Pennsylvania, no settled weather. In my French Moulin, the heat has been off the previous charts. In neither area have the crops done well.
Rapid change – catastrophic climate change, which so many have been denying in its weather form, is now upon us.
Even with great co-operation, the future will be very difficult.
Without it, we will be eating each other sooner than we think.

Posted: 10|5|09 at 1:12 pm. Category: Views.
Comments are closed, but you can trackback from your own site.