This is how fossil fuel (and other) damaging corporations make us feel. It's 'outsourced guilt' - making US feel like WE need to change. It's outrageous! I know of a writer who was employed by big oil to make everyone feel that there was an urgent need to recycle all our plastics. Meanwhile, if the whole world lived as we do in rich nations, the amount of rubbish we produce would take about a century to make a 1km by 1km mountain. As long as it is contained, recycling plastic and other wastes is NOT the most important environmental issue. We CAN wait for cheaper, better technologies and then dig up and go through our old tips. But why were big oil paying this lady? To distract us. To make middle-class people feel like they'd done their bit putting plastic in a different coloured bin.
YOU'RE MAKING BIG OIL HAPPY: As long as we don't question why we're still burning oil - big oil are happy! This is where the "Back to the land" romanticism you are pushing comes in. Nothing pleases big oil more than the 'lifeboat' Doomers. Those who have given up changing society already. It's why big oil fund 2 myths: the myth that climate change isn't real AND the opposite myth - that it is not only real, but too late to save the earth and we are all Doomed!
Evidence shows they fund Doomers now! How cynical is that? "If we can't convince them it's not real, we'll fund those Doomer nutters who say it's already too late! That will DEPRESS the activism right out of them!" The psychological evidence is that it does. Your version sells pretty much the same message. The modern industrial way of life cannot be reformed; it's all hopeless; give up; and come and live like the Amish. Doomer or "Degrowther" - big oil love you just the same. You as an individual want to try and give up oil!? Fine. Not a threat. You will not convince 1 in 1000 to follow you. But convince say 600 of those 1000 to stay in their cities and vote Greens? Now THAT is a threat!
YOU'RE PUSHING SOMETHING THAT IS NOT SUSTAINABLE ANYWAY! As the
Ecomodernist Manifesto points out - if we are forced to return to 'relying on' nature - we'll eat it do death! It's an important document and illustrates how at first using coal was an environmental benefit because it reduced the demand for trees! Now we have wind and solar and 100 times the potential off-river pumped hydro storage we could need - there's no need for coal. We can beat climate change! We can use large scale reforms to 'industrial agriculture' as we make it into something more regenerative. And that's using today's technology with animal livestock - not the miraculous new approaches I've referred to above with PF and giant seaweed farms.
But if the whole world were to 'decant' from our big cities out into rural areas - surprise surprise - it just would not work!
The back to the land romanticism of the Degrowth Lifeboat culture can only ever work for a small fraction of the population. There are simply too many people now to go back to that, and it would take too much time. We’re better off reforming industrial agriculture right now as we clean up our energy systems.
POPULATION: People are voting with their feet and leaving the land to move into the cities. And I’m glad! The first reason is that the modern world drives down population growth. People recommending that we all go back to subsistence level farming don’t understand that relying on your own farm increases poverty. As a widespread lifestyle choice, subsistence farming makes nations poor and so decreases their health and welfare spending. Stick them all back on the land and you may as well leave the ladies barefoot and pregnant in the kitchen. Old MacDonald had a farm - and his wife had to have 11 children! With a collapsed health care system you have to have that many to make sure SOME of them survive into adulthood. And you need a bigger family, because you’re planning to have enough kids stay at home and work the farm so you don’t starve to death when you’re old and infirm!
Bottom line? Back to the land means a return to population growth and MORE consumers to eat the planet to death! Modern city wealth means a health care system that ensures most children survive, and a welfare system that looks after the old.
Reduce population growth
SOLARPUNK CITIES / ECOCITIES / NEW URBANISM can radically reduce the amount of land and resources that cities consume. They can cut the land use down to 20% or even 10% of suburbia, and vastly reduce the number of cars society needs. But they do this while increasing wealth in a VASTLY more efficient manner than spread out small farmsteads. It’s like a Moore’s Law of cities. Every time you double a city’s population you get an extra 30% GDP for free.
Why innovation thrives in cities
IT JUST WILL NOT WORK! About half the human population already live in cities. Who is meant to supervise the move of 4.3 billion people out into the countryside? What happens to the efficiency of large industrial croplands that are the breadbaskets of the modern world when we split it up for a bunch of newbies? Who is going to compensate the big land owners? Who is going to teach 4.3 billion newbie farmers how to farm? Who is the jolly-green-giant that is going to pick up say a billion homes and move them out into the country? What happens to the cities we leave behind? Isn’t it all an incredible waste given we’ve already got those cities? How about we just leave people there and reform the industrial agriculture into regenerative agriculture where it is? Don’t you know that there are many hundreds of millions of people that live in cities in nations without enough farmland to feed their people? You are asking for the largest sudden migration in the history of humanity! George Monbiot has engaged with the Small Farm theorists - and shows that by the time most people left home to go find a farm - there would be no farmland for them! Please read “The Cruel Fantasies of Well-Fed people!”
The Cruel Fantasies of Well-Fed People
NO it is not - see Ecomodernist Manifesto and "Cruel Fantasies" articles above.
Are you kidding? Everywhere the human race spread during our hunter gatherer period megafauna died off. We ate them to death. Why? We relied on nature!
Nor is it forbidden IF we get it right!
It's not. It will increase poverty, decrease national health budgets, increase population growth, and basically increase the harm to people and planet!
Rubbish - as you will not convince 1% of people to move out with you into rural areas. Meanwhile - the global population is moving the other direction - from the land into the cities!
Solar is now doubling every 3 years globally. There will be hiccups along the way - but I'm convinced we'll have the Energy Transition sorted by 2050. Now if you JOIN me in researching this stuff and encouraging people to vote for clean energy (rather than Donald Trump!) - maybe you'll make a difference?
We don't. We're already going over our carbon budget in the next 5 years - and will go over 1.5. Trump's election is probably taking us from estimates of about 2 degrees to about 2.5 degrees! But here's the thing. If the rest of the world just DOES IT ANYWAY - maybe we can accelerate the Energy Transition there away from America's weird politics and offset some of the damage Trumpism will do the climate.
The passage is a symbol of God's judgment on empires that rage war against him. There are also passages of hopeful city living in Revelation and other parts of the bible!
Hunter gatherers sent many large mammals extinct. Amish populations are probably kept under control via the fact that they live in wealthier North America. But population demographics over centuries shows poor subsistence farming increases population.
So even if your lifestyle would have a lower impact per family - there would eventually be more families. More people relying on nature and eating it to death! But if we DECOUPLE our food requirements from nature - we'll have all the 'bacon' (from PF) and protein and fats and flavours we want - and both humans and nature will thrive!
Isaiah 24 is NOT about leaving cities before God judges them - it's about God judging the LAND of the ungodly. Will you please read it start to end? Your powers of comprehension are in question here! And how does it finish? With hope. In a city. You are wrong!
I'm amil. I don't believe in the 'rapture' as some kind of believers-only separate day from the rest of history. The Day of the Lord all happens together when he raises the dead, judges the sheep and goats, brings heaven and earth together in some new fashion, and restores nature! All at once - in the blink of an eye. What a day that will be! And you and I will be able to laugh and rejoice in how God has saved the earth - whatever us humans have done to it in the meantime.
Um - Eden is symbolic. Or where is that angel with the flaming sword - how has no one found it yet? And the talking snake? Eden had the tree of life. So it's a rather symbolic story explaining how after we fell - everything changed. I don't know what the fall actually looked like. But I know from the symbols that Satan tempted the first humans, they rebelled, and our life is now full of the sweat of our brow, weeds, and eventually death.
Of course. But in God's kindness, we now have energy systems that can work that ground for us. There will always be the frustration of being mortal creatures with limited time and limited capacities in this world. But we already live better than the richest emperors of old with clean water and modern medicine and modern entertainment! Technology will not repeal the spiritual damage and frustration and boredom we all feel with work - and the modern world has stresses of its own. But the physicality of the 'sweat of the brow'? Technology has reduced that somewhat.
You're saying more than the passage does! Sure - Genesis shows that with our sophistication and tool use we can easily become proud. The bible condemns that pride - I don't know that it condemns technology. Especially as it helps alleviate suffering.
Sure! History shows that. But the industrial revolution brought trains, which brought more awareness of how others live - and then radio - and then TV - and now the internet. We are more aware of the exploitation - and want to deal with it!
Sure! I topped my Advanced Diploma in Social Sciences. Preach it bro! But don't forget that the topic here is living in cities. We can work on the power structures of those cities more, and how to ensure better more informed democracies. That's a huge challenge with the rise of social media!
True! I have Jared Diamond's "Collapse" and Tainter's "The Collapse of Complex Societies" on my bookshelf. As I said, Doomers are my thing. I'm trying to offer hope to young activists to do something about all this - and sometimes that leads to Christian conversations in very secular, Doomer forums.
We ARE going over 1.5. It's GOING to get bumpy. But fleeing the cities will only slow down the energy transition and make matters worse!
Question: (apologies if I've already asked this and forgotten - I lost my job a few weeks ago and have been 'distracted.')
Are you already on a small farm?