Through a Glass, Darkly

The Guardian newspaper has published a fascinating debate between a pair of well-known British environmentalists, Paul Kingsnorth and George Monbiot. Kingsnorth is also a leading journalist and a poet; Monbiot is an author and a professor of political and ecological science.

The article is interesting on several levels. Both men foresee a near-unavoidable social crisis in the next mumblety decades, and their reasoning is worryingly well-founded, if perhaps a bit one-sided. They see the results in very different ways, however — Kingsnorth is something of a utopianist, Monbiot a dystopianist. Both assume that politicians are short-sighted, and that the will to save tomorrow at the expense of discomfort today is effectively non-existent. The debate really is worth reading, and I’d encourage you to go have a look, even if just as an interesting look at current ecological thought.

Signs of the Coming Apocalypse: The Sandwich of Knowledge

Dear George

On the desk in front of me is a set of graphs. The horizontal axis of each represents the years 1750 to 2000. The graphs show, variously, population levels, CO₂ concentration in the atmosphere, exploitation of fisheries, destruction of tropical forests, paper consumption, number of motor vehicles, water use, the rate of species extinction and the totality of the human economy’s gross domestic product.

What grips me about these graphs (and graphs don’t usually grip me) is that though they all show very different things, they have an almost identical shape. A line begins on the left of the page, rising gradually as it moves to the right. Then, in the last inch or so – around 1950 – it veers steeply upwards, like a pilot banking after a cliff has suddenly appeared from what he thought was an empty bank of cloud.

The root cause of all these trends is the same: a rapacious human economy bringing the world swiftly to the brink of chaos. We know this; some of us even attempt to stop it happening. Yet all of these trends continue to get rapidly worse, and there is no sign of that changing soon. What these graphs make clear better than anything else is the cold reality: there is a serious crash on the way.

The comments include the usual mad rantings of haters, evidence deniers, doomsayers and the perpetually bewildered, but in amongst them are some very interesting counterpoints, analyses and other little gems. You can normally see which are worth reading by how many recommendation points they have :)

My award for best post-article summation goes to ‘savage dave’, however:

savagedave: 17 Aug 09, 10:59pm

I for one welcome to coming apocalypse. We can have a world where all a man needs to make his way is some stubble, a mullet and a sawn off shotgun, and women are beautiful and deadly and clad entirely in fitted leather. One can live by your wits and your nerve, fending off hordes of mutants, cannibals and assorted beasts.

Much like Basingstoke on a saturday, in fact.

Thanks to the ever-awesome Mick Farren (yes, the Mick Farren *grin*) for the heads up.