December 16, 2022 (original posting date)
Chasing Perpetual Growth On a Finite Planet
A very brief contemplation (as I work on some longer ones) that shares my response to the following billboard that was shared on the Degrowth Facebook group I am a member of:
The insanity of such a message on a finite planet should be self-evident to all but sadly this is simply not so. I have found that the overwhelming majority of people actually don’t pause whatsoever to consider how absolutely ridiculous such messages are.
Most (all?) are so caught up in relatively meaningless distractions or real-life personal crises that the ruling caste’s misleading narratives surrounding perpetual growth and our technological ingenuity to bypass hard biogeochemical limits are accepted as gospel truth. And it doesn’t help that humans have a tendency to defer/obey ‘experts/authority’ and participate heartily in groupthink.
Combine these cognitive ‘distortions’ with the fact that the products of growth (e.g., new infrastructure, additional services, etc.) are visibly and quickly perceived yet the negative impacts of our attempts to sustain our exponential growth can be readily externalised and/or take many years to materialise, and it is near impossible to make accurate attributions regarding causal relationships.
But as Meadows et al. argue in The Limits to Growth: when response delays occur in an exponential growth environment, overshooting a system’s capacity to sustain itself is common as well as the collapse that inevitably follows. It’s simply a matter of time and pursuing business-as-usual behaviours…
Infinite growth. Finite planet. What could possibly go wrong?
If you’ve made it to the end of this contemplation and have got something out of my writing, please consider ordering the trilogy of my ‘fictional’ novel series, Olduvai (PDF files; only $9.99 Canadian), via my website or the link below — the ‘profits’ of which help me to keep my internet presence alive and first book available in print (and is available via various online retailers).
Attempting a new payment system as I am contemplating shutting down my site in the future (given the ever-increasing costs to keep it running).
If you are interested in purchasing any of the 3 books individually or the trilogy, please try the link below indicating which book(s) you are purchasing.
Costs (Canadian dollars):
Book 1: $2.99
Book 2: $3.89
Book 3: $3.89
Trilogy: $9.99
Feel free to throw in a ‘tip’ on top of the base cost if you wish; perhaps by paying in U.S. dollars instead of Canadian. Every few cents/dollars helps…
https://paypal.me/olduvaitrilogy?country.x=CA&locale.x=en_US
If you do not hear from me within 48 hours or you are having trouble with the system, please email me: olduvaitrilogy@gmail.com.
You can also find a variety of resources, particularly my summary notes for a handful of texts, especially Catton’s Overshoot and Tainter’s Collapse: see here.
It Bears Repeating: Best Of…Volume 1
A compilation of writers focused on the nexus of limits to growth, energy, and ecological overshoot.
With a Foreword and Afterword by Michael Dowd, authors include: Max Wilbert; Tim Watkins; Mike Stasse; Dr. Bill Rees; Dr. Tim Morgan; Rob Mielcarski; Dr. Simon Michaux; Erik Michaels; Just Collapse’s Tristan Sykes & Dr. Kate Booth; Kevin Hester; Alice Friedemann; David Casey; and, Steve Bull.
The document is not a guided narrative towards a singular or overarching message; except, perhaps, that we are in a predicament of our own making with a far more chaotic future ahead of us than most imagine–and most certainly than what mainstream media/politics would have us believe.
Click here to access the document as a PDF file, free to download.