An Inconvenient Apocalypse: Environmental Collapse, Climate Crisis, and the Fate of Humanity

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If that migration is to occur, it’ll happen because enough people decide it’s worth it to suffer the cost, inconvenience, and dislocation of the initial phases of E2. As in an effective seminar, they posit a situation and then raise questions that will resonate with readers. The more people alive who can be trained to help solve the problems that confront us, the faster we can remove obstacles, and the greater the economic inheritance we shall bequeath to our descendants. Yes, we’ll need technology and more importantly, a vastly different economic and political system which is more likely now to arise from the partial ashes of our current society. However … I think the people who will starve to death because of this radical conservation approach should have an informed say.

An Inconvenient Apocalypse” by Wes Jackson An Excerpt from “An Inconvenient Apocalypse” by Wes Jackson

We humans have made a mess of things, which is readily evident if we face the avalanche of studies and statistics describing the contemporary ecological crises we face. His Beyond Growth: The Economics of Sustainable Development (1996) and For the Common Good written with John B. Also, I just wonder where all those people that live between the third and 50th floor of an apartment complex in a city are going to get their food? If that is the case (it seems intuitively reasonable, perhaps even optimistic), then we are currently over the limit by 3X. While making no religious claims, Jackson and Jensen engage the core questions that religious people must ask, if their own witness is to be credible: Who are we, and where are we in history?

And the truth is, despite Lawrence Summers and his many acolytes and associates, the staggering costs of economic growth are with us, not because we placed sensible limits on growth, but because we failed to do so. One of the most convincing arguments Friedrich Engels made in his unfinished Dialectics of Nature (pdf) is that an increase in quantity leads inexorably to a difference in quality. Also they can create problems with social isolation and lack of access to positive modern necessities (health care for one). Well, there’s one god, one way forward through the arrow of time, and, ooops, the angel is unsealing the seventh seal. This is free download An Inconvenient Apocalypse: Environmental Collapse, Climate Crisis, and the Fate of Humanity by Wes Jackson complete book soft copy.

An Inconvenient Apocalypse | naked capitalism An Inconvenient Apocalypse | naked capitalism

Regarding the four questions of size, scale, scope, and speed, “the modern economy created by the Industrial and Digital Revolutions is not running out of time but rather has run out of time to correct the course. I don’t know how to comment now without further thought so I’ll just say that a few days ago I completed Wendell Berry’s new book “The Need To Be Whole,” which I think might be his best non-fiction ever. All of this was “science-based,” of course, the marketed intellectual product of Land Grant universities across the US.The technocrats who gave us the Green Revolution “believed that managing this industrial style of agriculture within an increasingly globalized economic system was withing the scope of their confidence. In the words of James Baldwin, “Not everything that is faced can be changed; but nothing can be changed until it is faced. Much of this work is very good, but in my experience little of it comes from the perspective of a scientist and agricultural revolutionary who appreciates so fully the folly that is industrial agriculture. But even with the mounting evidence of the consequences for people and the ecosphere, we have not committed to a serious project to slow the damage that we do.

An Inconvenient Apocalypse: Excerpt - resilience An Inconvenient Apocalypse: Excerpt - resilience

Our current translation of the Serenity Prayer is: Do the next right thing, It is what it is, Pick your fights.Economic inequality and the resulting suffering have deepened in our lifetimes, facilitated by a government so captured by concentrated wealth that attempts to renew the moderate New Deal-era social contract seem radical to many.

An Inconvenient Apocalypse – ROBERT JENSEN

Specific individuals and societies are morally accountable for their failures, and certain political and economic systems are central to those failures. Few books can shake up and awaken long-time climate activists, environmental activists, and sustainability activists to expansive new levels of understanding of the big picture of our major crises, but this is one of those books. Even if humans can limit the increase in the Earth’s temperature, other factors are pushing us to an apocalypse. The solution requires addressing today's systemic failures and confronting human nature by recognizing the limits of our ability to predict how those failures will play out over time.Like all their previous books together, this one is founded on a recognition of the obvious but widely denied reality that Earth is finite, and that humans have to learn to live within its limits. The nature of all living organisms, so this book argues, is to go after 'dense energy', resulting eventually in crisis. Though these massive challenges can feel overwhelming, Jackson and Jensen weave a secular reading of theological concepts–the prophetic, the apocalyptic, a saving remnant, and grace–to chart a collective, realistic path for humanity not only to survive our apocalypse but also to emerge on the other side with a renewed appreciation of the larger living world. Jackson and Jensen examine how geographic determinism shaped our past and led to today’s social injustice, consumerist culture, and high-energy/high-technology dystopias. I’m currently writing an essay myself which may wind up being titled along the lines of “Capitalism as Mental Illness.