Gaat onze beschaving volgens het boekje ten onder?

Vooraf: ik denk dat er nog een kleine maar reële kans is dat zonne-energie op het nippertje een game changer wordt, als de kostprijs blijft dalen en een omslagpunt wordt bereikt, waarbij bedrijfsleven en burgers massaal afscheid nemen van fossiele brandstoffen. Een beetje hoop geeft bijvoorbeeld het bescheiden succes van de campagne Let’s Divest From Fossil Fuels! van de belangrijke organisatie 350.org, waaraan inmiddels al circa 200 Amerikaanse scholen en universiteiten meedoen.
Maar dan moeten de media wel stoppen met het onevenredig veel aandacht geven aan ontkenners van de opwarming van de aarde door menselijk toedoen en het publiek eindelijk eens goed informeren over de wetenschappelijke consensus; K.

Door Chris Hedges, Truthdig / Alternet, 20 januari 2013

The human species, led by white Europeans and Euro-Americans, has been on a 500-year-long planetwide rampage of conquering, plundering, looting, exploiting and polluting the Earth - as well as killing the indigenous communities that stood in the way. But the game is up. The technical and scientific forces that created a life of unparalleled luxury - as well as unrivaled military and economic power - for the industrial elites are the forces that now doom us.

[...] Complex civilizations have a bad habit of destroying themselves. Anthropologists including Joseph Tainter in  The Collapse of Complex Societies, Charles L. Redman in  Human Impact on Ancient Environments and Ronald Wright in A Short History of Progress have laid out the familiar patterns that lead to systems breakdown.

[...] The very things that cause societies to prosper in the short run, especially new ways to exploit the environment such as the invention of irrigation, lead to disaster in the long run because of unforeseen complications. This is what I called in A Short History of Progress the 'progress trap'. We have set in motion an industrial machine of such complexity and such dependence on expansion that we do not know how to make do with less or move to a steady state in terms of our demands on nature.

[...] And as the collapse becomes palpable, if human history is any guide, we like past societies in distress will retreat into what anthropologists call 'crisis cults'. The powerlessness we will feel in the face of ecological and economic chaos will unleash further collective delusions, such as fundamentalist belief in a god or gods who will come back to earth and save us [i.e. apocalyptische wanen en dito politici en oorlogen; K].

Omschrijving op Amazon.com:

This book does not set out once more to raise the alarm to encourage us to take radical measures to head off climate chaos. There have been any number of books and reports in recent years explaining just how dire the future looks and how little time we have left to act. This book is about why we have ignored those warnings, and why it is now too late. It is a book about the frailties of the human species as expressed in both the institutions we built and the psychological dispositions that have led us on the path of self-destruction. It is about our strange obsessions, our hubris, and our penchant for avoiding the facts. It is the story of a battle within us between the forces that should have caused us to protect the Earth - our capacity to reason and our connection to Nature - and those that, in the end, have won out - our greed, materialism and alienation from Nature. And it is about the 21st century consequences of these failures.

Clive Hamilton is author of the bestselling Affluenza and Growth Fetish, of Scorcher, and most recently Freedom Paradox.

Requiem for a Species; Why We Resist the Truth about Climate Change
Clive Hamilton, Routledge, 200 pagina's, 2010
Ook verkrijgbaar bij Bol.com

Zie ook:

Let's Divest From Fossil Fuels
A campus guide to fossil fuel divestment.
Check out the Divestment Toolkit.

We Distract Ourselves With Petty Spectacles While the World Goes to Hell
Door Chris Hedges, Truthdig / Alternet, 3 september 2012

Later toegevoegd:

How Unchecked Capitalism Has Brought the World to the Brink of Apocalypse - and What We Must Do Now
Door Robert jensen, Alternet, 9 juli 2013

We have both a moral obligation and practical reasons to work for justice and sustainability.

Wetenschappers alarmeren: massa-extinctie gaande
Trouw, 25 juli 2014

En m'n blognotities:
Helpt alleen een opstand tegen het neoliberalisme?
'Meervoudige systeem-crisis biedt ook kansen'
Realistisch doemdenken
Groen bestuur: van markteconomie naar harmonie met de natuur
Groene stroom begint echt concurrerend te worden
Een mooi Amerika is mogelijk