Steve Bull (https://olduvai.ca)
2 min readApr 2, 2023

--

I visited the link you shared. There’s not much there in terms of actions; in fact, none at all that I could discern except perhaps to get like-minded people to begin talking via Virtual Climate Parties.

What I did sense were two basic suggestions: hand over all decision-making/plans to ‘scientists’ (which ones is the first question that pops to mind, because there’s much disagreement among them about ‘solutions’); and, research the best technologies for achieving ‘sustainability’.

The very fact that the approach is complex technology-based indicates it is not truly about ‘sustainability’ but about attempting to sustain the unsustainable systems in place, particularly the technology-based ones— the one highlighted on the site is ‘sustainable aviation’.

While I don’t disagree that the pursuit of the infinite/perpetual growth chalice is being led by our ruling elite (who are a minority in our world), that it is just this group that has caused our overshoot (anthropogenic climate impacts being a symptom of this overarching predicament) overlooks the cyclical nature of complex societies ‘collapsing’ due to a variety of phenomena but most noticeably ever-expanding populations that over-exploit their natural environment and then encounter diminishing returns on their investments in complexities (especially nowadays complex technologies).

We need to acknowledge/accept that it is our technologies and associated complexities that have led us here — and fossil fuels have simply sped up and turned global this repetitious pattern. Our governing/ruling elite have leveraged these to meet their primary goal (control/expand their revenue streams) but we have all — especially those of us in so-called ‘advanced’ economies — contributed to the predicament. Attempts to ‘sustain’ these only furthers our overshoot…

--

--

Steve Bull (https://olduvai.ca)
Steve Bull (https://olduvai.ca)

Written by Steve Bull (https://olduvai.ca)

A guy trying to make sense of a complex and seemingly insane world. Spend my days pondering our various predicaments while practising local food production...

Responses (1)