Introduction

Welcome to Sustainable or Bust!  This collection of rants and reviews explores facets of genuine, ecological sustainability.  In the old-fashioned sense of the word, sustainability has to do with living in a way that doesn’t diminish the ecosystem over the passage of thousands of years.  The ravens, deer, and salmon have mastered a way of life that has no need for soil mining, water mining, fish mining, forest mining.  Only humans have figured out how to break the laws of nature, and nature is not amused.

Good old-fashioned fundamentalist sustainability is largely ignored these days, because it is the opposite of our ferociously wasteful consumer society.  Genuine sustainability generates no corporate profits.  It stimulates no economic growth.  It cannot be manufactured in Bangladesh factories and sold in trendy suburban malls.  It’s a far simpler way of living, and it doesn’t piss off Big Mama Nature (an important fact to remember).

Meanwhile, mainstream society has invented a marketing gimmick that might be called sustainable everything — sustainable growth, sustainable development, sustainable cities, sustainable agriculture, sustainable forestry, and so on.  I call it ersatz sustainability, because it has nothing whatsoever to do with genuine sustainability.  It’s a fascinating experiment in magical thinking — if we call something “sustainable” enough times, then it is!  Repeat the words “clean coal” enough times, and coal burning becomes as wholesome as breast milk.

In the coming decades, intensifying climate change, combined with the end of cheap energy, and other assorted surprises, seem likely to pull the plug on the consumer way of life, as we know it.  This will force a lot of beneficial change that we refuse to pursue voluntarily, like the yucky business of sharply reducing our population, and learning to live without cars, electronic gadgets, and millions of other unessential things.

It’s impossible to return to a sustainable way of life anytime soon, because there are way too many people living way too hard.  But the cool thing about collapse is that it may give birth to a new situation in which a return to sustainability once again becomes possible — far fewer humans, and far more everything else.  By definition, all unsustainable modes of living can only be temporary, so a sustainable future is guaranteed, at some point.  Hopefully there will be more species at the victory party than just heat tolerant bacteria.

The odds that there will be human faces at the party can be improved if more people today develop a sound understanding of genuine sustainability, and share this knowledge with others.  We are less likely to repeat practices that we have learned to be fatal mistakes.  These errors are better known now than ever before, but not by the masses, yet.

If the entire global economy suddenly died today, all the lights went out, and all money became worthless, the future would be in the hands the survivors, most of whom are clueless about genuine sustainability.  They would likely regroup and resume the same fatal mistakes that we excel at today, simply because they suffer from a shortage of intelligent ideas.  Ignorance is stupid — but curable.

Nothing can change until ideas change.  At the moment, we have access to an amazing global communication system, a powerful tool for sharing ideas.  It’s actually useful for things beyond bombarding us with cat videos, tweets, and pornography.  How long will this system continue to operate, as Peak Cheap Energy keeps pressing harder on the brakes?  It would be wise to make good use of it, before it slips beneath the waves forever.

You will not find “the solution” in this book.  Only problems have solutions (i.e., a flat tire).  We’re in a predicament, a perplexing mess that can only be outgrown over time (i.e., industrial civilization).  Freeing ourselves from the madness will likely take generations.  The good news is that this may not be impossible.  History informs us that human societies are capable of making sharp turns, for better or worse.  It’s worth a try.  We have nothing to lose, right?

What you will find in this book is a gallery important thinkers, and reviews of their important writings — writers that usually fly beneath the radar of mainstream journalism and education.  They explore realms of knowledge far beyond the center ring circus of sex, sports, stock markets, and sex.  My devious plan is that by the time you make it to the far end of the gallery, you will have picked up a fair number of new and stimulating ideas along the way.

For more than 20 years, I’ve been studying the Earth Crisis.  I’ve read hundreds of books.  The ones that I’ve reviewed here are among my favorites.  Of course, a brief review is never a substitute for experiencing the entire work.  If you have the time and the desire, I recommend that you read them all.  You will see the world in a new way.  Most of these authors have written more than one book, and many of their other books are also fascinating and mind expanding.

Sustainable or Bust is a companion to my first book, What Is Sustainable, which discussed the basics of genuine sustainability.  Sustainable or Bust is a supplement, and it devotes more attention to exploring the core essence of human beings.  The earlier book does not need to be read first, but folks who like one will like both.  Genuine sustainability is an enormous subject, and it is my intent to provide useful guidebooks for those who wish to expand their understanding.

We are blessed to inhabit a fascinating era, a powerful turning point, when our famous big brains will have a splendid opportunity to demonstrate their legendary power — sink or swim.  Humankind has moved beyond Peak Cheap Energy, Peak Wooly Mammoths, and Peak Neanderthals.  We’re zipping along towards Peak Food, Peak Humans, Peak Cell Phones, and Peak Ersatz Sustainability.  Then what?

The spirits of our wild ancestors strongly recommend a hasty return to genuine sustainability, wildness and freedom, and our sacred home in the family of life.  They’re standing on the sidelines, jumping up and down, waving their arms, and shouting, “Holy <bleeping> hominids!  Watch out!  Turn on yer brains, dudes!  Snap out of it!”

Well-fed minds and clear thinking are our only hope for survival.  Clear thinking is a beautiful power that we acquire after we have liberated ourselves from the mental straightjacket of beliefs.

Enjoy!

[Sustainable or Bust will be released, in paperback and Kindle versions, in June 2013.]

God Save Me From A Normal Life - Part One

Returning to genuine sustainability in the near future is impossible, because there are far too many people in the world.  There is no way to feed them all without causing deeper permanent injuries to the ecosystem.  Sadly, humankind displays almost no interest in doing what needs to be done to address overpopulation.  It’s much easier to unplug our brains, close our eyes, and assign the unpleasant business to famine, war, and disease.  So be it.

Our extreme overpopulation is possible because we are living in a temporary bubble of abundant energy.  Unsustainable industrial agriculture can produce far more food than the unsustainable muscle-powered farming of earlier times.  But the days of cheap energy are behind us now, which means that the outburst of unusual growth and prosperity will wind down, stop, and reverse.  Sooner or later, industrial civilization as we know it will run out of fuel and collapse.  Industrial agriculture will no longer be possible.  The next 50 years are going to be radically different from the last 50 years. 

We’ve spent our entire lives living in a massively unsustainable, planet-killing way of life.  So did our parents and grandparents.  To our minds, this way of life seems perfectly normal, and we expect it to continue forever.  Actually, it’s a bizarre accident in the human journey, it’s moving into its final stages, and it can never happen again, thankfully. 

A huge obstacle to the healing process is our perception of history.  We’ve all been taught that our industrial civilization is nothing less than a miracle.  It’s always getting better, and the best is yet to come.  Does this sound like a problem that needs to be fixed?  Well, what it sounds like is a history that has little relationship with reality.  Bogus history provides us with a false identity, and it enables self-destructive thinking and living.

Thus, a primary task in the healing process is deliberately unlearning bogus history.  We mistakenly assume bogus history to be the truth, because it has been repeatedly hammered into our brains during many years at school.  It becomes the foundation of our worldview.  Bogus history hides the enormous problems of progress under the bed, and presents us with glorious myths of brilliant achievement.

If we gaze in the mirror and see the reflection of a being lucky to be living at the wondrous zenith of the human journey, then the notion of genuine sustainability is purely absurd, and not worthy of consideration.  But what if we see the reflection of someone who has had the misfortune of inheriting a hideous treasure of mistakes and illusions from 300 generations of well-intended ancestors?  In this case, genuine sustainability takes on the appearance of the antidote, the cure, something precious — a lifesaver.

Unlearning bogus history is like taking a powerful laxative that vigorously cleanses us of our false sense of identity.  Happily, this process has begun.  A growing number of radical thinkers are seriously questioning the value of domestication, agriculture, civilization, and industrial society.  They are coming to appreciate the intelligence and virtues of nature-based societies. 

The doddering drooling defenders of the mainstream work hard to keep these new thinkers safely locked away in the lunatic fringe cage, but their efforts will fail.  These new thinkers are displaying the first signs of powerful wisdom to emerge in the entire history of civilization.  They announce that our way of life is a mistake, and it’s rapidly destroying us.  Comprehending this essential idea enables and encourages clear thinking, intelligent change, and great healing — beautiful breakthroughs long obstructed by the idiotic old myths of progress and perpetual growth.

We must have history.  We cannot live with vision and power if we don’t know who we are, and where we came from.  After we’ve thrown bogus history overboard, we’ll need new histories that have deep roots in reality.  At the foundation of the healing process are learning, thinking, discussing, simplifying, and exploring nature (rewilding).  This work can be pursued at low cost, with greater freedom, outside the realm of formal institutionalized education, by people who want to make meaningful contributions with their lives.

Once upon a time, Carl Jung said, “I am not what happened to me, I am what I chose to become.”  This is why many nature-based societies encouraged people to discover their calling via vision quest ceremonies.  Living with a vision provided us with a direction and purpose in life, and helped us avoid getting lost and wandering aimlessly.

Societies also need a vision to live well.  In nature-based societies, vision was provided by the time-proven traditional culture.  The way to a good life was to carefully follow the path of the ancestors.  In today’s disaster-based societies, the guiding vision enshrines perpetual growth — a dead-end path of infantile excess that fuels catastrophic ecocide, and pandemics of mental illness and degenerative disease. 

Our disaster-based culture is bloated with fantasies of unsustainable science fiction futures, like the Jetsons, Star Wars, or colonies on Mars.  Nature exists outside the walls of these bleak humans-only prisons.  We dream that tomorrow will be a technological wonderland — robot-driven electric cars, smart highways, smart grids, high-speed trains, Internet everything, windmills and solar panels, and on and on — nothing sustainable, and nothing that is necessary for a healthy and enjoyable life.  This vision has no future, because the temporary bubble of abundant energy has no future.  Perpetual growth on a finite planet is impossible, and pursuing it is insane.  It’s time for a new vision.

To be continued.